


we could be an ancient tale

by loyaulte_me_lie



Series: you were written in the stars [2]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fix-It, Found Family, Friendship, Grief, Hijinks & Shenanigans, John Parry Lives, Lee Scoresby Lives, Lyra is Totally Feral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28958925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: John Parry comes home after four years trapped in another world. Will grows up with a father. Ten years later, he meets a girl on the Oxford ring road because no matter what changes, some things are always meant to happen.
Relationships: Elaine Parry & John Parry & Mary Malone, Elaine Parry/John Parry, Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry
Series: you were written in the stars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108145
Comments: 37
Kudos: 65





	1. homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> This is another Eliza + Marie joint idea / plot and came out of a long discussion about what would change if John Parry came home earlier than he does in canon. The answer - not a *lot* but everyone is happier! Therefore it had to be written. I had fun with it. I hope you guys do too. As ever, thanks to the usual gang for support and endless chats about this, and to Marie for being my HDM partner in screaming, crime, plotting, and beta-ing. Title from "Almost Home" by Keston Cobbler's Club, and the epigraph is from Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's beautiful collection "bodymap."
> 
> T/W: grief, kidnapping, battle, abusive parenting (ie) Marisa Coulter.

> _“and then go explode the whole known world_
> 
> _which is like explore but with just one letter different_
> 
> _you know **” –**_ **Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha**

*

**June 2011**

It doesn’t feel real. That is the only thing John can think. He stands at the end of the driveway, looking up at the house. The sunlight glimmers off the big picture window and the fruit trees are shabby, crowded with white blossom. He’s dreamed of this moment for four long, aching years and now he’s here he doesn’t know what to do with himself. The next step feels like it is over a yawning abyss. It might not _be_ his house anymore. Elaine might have moved or moved on. The thought makes his stomach turn.

“Go on,” Sayan says with an encouraging nip to the ear. Her claws dig into his shoulder through the coat he’d brought back from the other world. The detritus of his survival jangle in the pockets as he shifts his weight. “I want to meet her.”

His key still fits in the lock. He thinks about ringing the doorbell but it’s too late now, the door is swinging open. He recognises the shoe-rack, the rug, the mirror on the wall with the stair-rail curving above it. There’s a toy car abandoned under the radiator by the door to the kitchen. His son. He can’t breathe. The stairs creak and he looks up and-

“What the- _John_?”

Elaine is paused where the stairs turn. She’s thinner than she used to be, her collar bones like the wings of a bird. Her hair is in two thick braids rather than all the little ones he’s used to. She’s wearing the jumper he’d bought in Santiago that one time they’d got caught in a torrential rainstorm. Her eyes have gone glazed with shock. He catches the glint of her wedding ring, gold and shining against her brown fingers, and suddenly his vision is blurring. There’s a lump in his throat and he wishes he could see her properly but it’s all too _bloody_ much…

Sayan caws softly and flutters to the ground.

“Elaine,” he manages, takes a deep, acidic breath that doesn’t reach his lungs. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“You _asshole,_ ” Elaine says, but then before he knows it she’s flinging herself down the remaining stairs and into his arms. He’s crying properly now. She might be as well. He’s dimly aware of saying _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ into her neck. Her hand is in his hair, and he thinks if this is a dream, he’s not going to survive the waking of it. There’s just no way. This is the last bloody straw.

Eventually Elaine draws back a little, swipes at her eyes and then at his, rests her hands on his shoulders. John has seen three different suns by now and more constellations than he can count; her smile is brighter than any of them.

“Come on,” she says, pulling him after her into the sitting room. There are new books stacked on the shelves, a pile of blankets he doesn’t recognise, an old chest half open and full of toys and picture books. Everything else is just the same. The art they’d chosen when they’d moved in here, just married and full of joy and hope and disbelief that they could be _this_ lucky, is still on the walls. His eyes catch again on the toys and he’s looking around for the tiny baby – little boy, now, four whole years old – he’d kissed goodbye in this room before he’d left and…

“Will?” he asks as Elaine pulls him down onto the sofa.

“Take your coat off, it’s boiling in here,” she says, then, “he’s out at the playground. They’ll be back soon. You’ll see him soon.”

“Ok.” He pulls his coat off, folds it over the cushions. She’s right. It’s warmer in here than houses in the other world. He’d forgotten about that, about the marvel of insulation and central heating. Sayan has hopped carefully up onto the back of the sofa. Elaine glances at her but doesn’t comment. She has folded her legs up beneath her the way she always does. Their knees are touching and she’s still holding both of his hands. She’s _here._ He didn’t think he’d be this lucky.

“I don’t know what to say,” she says after a long while of just looking at each other, drinking everything in. “Your hair’s longer.” Then, eyes dipping to the shaman tattoos dappled across his knuckles, “your hands…” and then back up to Sayan, “your pet _osprey…_ ”

 _Well at least she knows her birds,_ Sayan thinks in his direction.

 _She’s always loved birds,_ John thinks back, then, focussing on Elaine. “I don’t know where to begin,” he admits.

“At the beginning,” she says.

“You’re not going to believe me.”

“I trust you to tell me the truth.”

They sink into quiet. She’s running her fingers over the back of his hand, like she wasn’t the one left all on her own for four years with a little baby and no word and no hope. She waits, quietly, and he’s always loved this about her; how she waits for someone to be ready to speak.

“There was a storm,” he says. “A bad one. Came out of absolutely nowhere. Three of us got separated from the others. I thought we were going to die.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. There was a patch of sunlight in the middle of this storm. Just a square of it. Like a window. Like those windows I wrote to you about, those myths about arctic other worlds we’d heard from the Inuit. The ones my colleague was obsessed with.” He pauses, “It was go through it or die. So we climbed through it, into the mountains of another world. We made a camp, decided to do some experiments, wait it out and go back, but we got attacked by these _things,_ god, I’ve never seen anything like it. I…no, I can’t…” he breathes, slow, pushes the awful memory back down where it belongs, “I was the only survivor. I lost my way in the attempt to get away from them. Eventually I found another window. I _was_ nearly dead by then, but a local Sami tribe found me and took me in. When I had recovered, I tried to go back and find the windows, to get back home, but they’d vanished.”

“ _John,_ ” Elaine breathes. Her eyes are wide and shiny, her mouth set. He looks down at their hands, squeezes her fingers, chokes back more tears and breathes, once, twice, three times.

“I tried to get back for years. It’s the only thing I could do. I tried and tried – travelled, learnt, sought out experts, did _everything_ …”

“But you’re here now. You did it.”

She doesn’t ask how, not yet. They both know that that story can wait. Instead, he says: “I’m scared I’m dreaming.”

“You’re not,” both Elaine and Sayan say at the same time, and Elaine startles, stares between him and Sayan.

“I definitely wasn’t expecting you to be able to talk,” she says.

“Sayan Kotor is the physical manifestation of my soul. A dæmon. It’s the natural state of things in the world I ended up in,” he says, heart steadying. “She’s the one good, beautiful thing to come out of this.”

Sayan ruffles her wings. “It baffles me that no-one realises what a hopeless romantic this man is.”

Elaine laughs properly. “So she’s the asshole side of you that no-one but me knows exists?”

“Sounds about right,” Sayan says. Elaine leans her chin on the side of the sofa, examines Sayan properly. After a second, Sayan hops closer and leans her face down against Elaine’s. John inhales sharply at the contact, at the feeling. He knows all about the taboos, had them explained to him in no uncertain terms by the people who’d taken him in, but this feels right. Like warmth and light dawning in his chest. Perhaps it’s different with someone you love. He wouldn’t be surprised.

“He is right, you know. You are very beautiful,” Elaine says after a moment.

“Evidently my incessant grooming pays off,” Sayan replies, and then, because she’s being an uncharacteristic sap, “you are too. I see why we fell in love with you.”

“You were there?”

“Not consciously,” Sayan says. “Not in this form. I wasn’t a giant bird hiding in John’s left ventricle. But I was something invisible and breathing, like your dæmon still is.”

“So you…”

“It took several months for Sayan to become corporeal,” John says gently, reading her mind. “I frightened the hell out of the tribe when I appeared with no dæmon, but they were kind. They helped me find her.”

“Good,” Elaine says, fiercely. “I’m glad they were kind. I’m…glad is such a weak word, I’m just…”

He doesn’t know what sentence she’s about to finish because just then, a key rattles in the lock. John freezes. Sayan turns her head one hundred and eight degrees to look at the door. There’s the sound of the front door rattling, a woman’s voice with a thick Irish accent.

“Ok, mud-monster, can you take your wellies off? You ok? Need a hand? Gosh, how are we going to explain to Mam how dirty you are?” she says, cheerfully.

A little boy’s voice piping back, “But mud is fun, Mary.”

“It is. But not inside our nice clean house. Give me your other foot, there’s a good boy. Are you going to go show Mam what you found?”

“Mummy!” the boy calls.

“In here, sweetheart,” Elaine calls back. A little boy with brown skin and a puff of curly hair skids into the room, clutching a stick with three blossoms on it. He has Elaine’s colouring, but his face is like looking into an old photograph; John can see his own nose, his eyebrows, his chin reflected right back at him. He can’t believe it, that the squealing baby he left has turned into this entire little person, standing stock still on the rug in a pair of stripy socks, dark eyes wide and curious. He’s missed so much. The weight of it hits him all at once, like a stun grenade to the chest, choking.

There is a red-headed woman in a denim jacket behind Will. She pauses in the doorway, uncertain.

“Um,” she says. “Elaine?”

When he looks back at Elaine, briefly, loathe to take his eyes off his son, she’s wiping fresh tears from her cheeks, smiling like her face is going to break apart with the force of it.

“Mary, this is my husband. He came back. He’s home.”

Then the woman, Mary, is crouching down. She taps Will’s shoulder, and he looks back at her.

“Look Will,” she says, very softly. “Looks like your Da has found his way back to you. You going to go say hello?”

“Hello,” Will says. He blinks and then scampers sideways across the room and climbs into Elaine’s lap, burying his face in her shoulder and then sneaking peeks over at John. John can’t look away.

 _He’s perfect,_ Sayan says in his head, wondering. _Look at him, John. Look at him._

“I’m going to make tea,” he hears Mary say distantly. “How does…”

“Milk, no sugar,” Elaine says. “Thank you.”

“No worries.”

The kettle goes on and then Will cups his hands around Elaine’s ear, whispers something into it.

“Yes, you can go and draw,” she says. “Remember what we said about putting the mat down?”

“Yes, Mummy,” Will says and then slides off, tip-toeing in an exaggerated fashion past John and then sprinting for his chest.

“He’s usually more tired-out after the park,” Elaine says absently, and then back at John. “I’m sorry, he’ll…

“He doesn’t know me,” John interrupts gently, breathing through the ache, trying to be rational. “I didn’t expect anything different. I’m just…”

“I know, love,” Elaine says and shifts even closer as Mary brings the tea tray in and sets it on the coffee table.

“I can go,” she says, scooping a mug off the tray. “I’ll go.”

“You don’t have to,” both John and Elaine say at the same time. He has no idea why Mary is here, really, but right now he doesn’t care. She’s acting like she lives here. Maybe she does. Elaine doesn’t seem think anything is out of the ordinary, so John won’t either.

“Oh, ok,” Mary says, and sinks into the armchair opposite them. Will has got his drawing mat out by the fireplace and his pens and is lying on his stomach on the rug, scribbling away. His tongue is sticking out. Occasionally he looks up at John. He probably thinks he’s being subtle, John realises after a moment, turns his attention to Mary and Elaine to give Will enough privacy to check him out without feeling watched.

“Mary’s my best friend,” Elaine says. “My housemate, for the last few years. She’s just been wrapping up a PhD on dark matter, so she’s probably a good person to talk to about multiverses and things.”

“Multiverses?” Mary asks, looking between them, and then glancing to Sayan who is currently engaged in a silent staring contest with Will.

“Think they might be more real than we all realised,” Elaine says without a second’s hesitation. It tells John everything he needs to know; if Elaine trusts her with the truth, he will too.

“I was stuck in another world. That’s where I’ve been all this time,” he adds.

Mary’s mouth drops open, and then with some effort, closes. “Right,” she says, dazed. “Ok. That’s…unexpected.”

“I know it’s not particularly believable…”

“No, it’s…” she sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m not…you know what? Not now. Science can wait. Now isn’t the time to be talking string theory.”

“Maybe not,” John says. “But we should, soon.” Then, his brain catching up with him, he turns to Elaine, “how on _earth_ did you end up with a particle physicist as a housemate?”

“Blackwells,” Elaine says, too pleased with herself. John laughs because _of course._ He shouldn’t have considered any other option. Elaine’s kind of people always congregate in bookshops.

“I nearly mowed her and Will down,” Mary smiles, eyes crinkling at the memory. “And then she helped me find the right books.”

“And then she invited me for coffee to apologise for running into me,” Elaine says. “And I invited her to live with me.”

“As you do,” John says.

“It was maybe six weeks after it all happened,” Elaine says.

Mary catches the expression on his face, rushes to fill the sudden silence. “I needed better flatmates. Elaine needed adult company. Turned out a lot more permanent than either of us expected, but it’s been good.”

“Good,” John says, making sure he meets Mary’s eyes briefly, before turning back to Elaine. “I’m glad you weren’t on your own.”

“Chu and Davids have been keeping an eye on me too,” Elaine says. “And Mary forced me to find better friends.”

“Your old friends were crap,” Mary agrees.

John has only ever known Elaine’s friends briefly, for a dinner or a trip to the theatre here and there. They were interesting people one and all, but not the sort that could be trusted to stick around when the waters got rough. Fairweather friends, Elaine always used to say with a laugh. It hadn’t mattered much when he’d been here, when she’d had support that wouldn’t _ever_ leave, but…

“It’s ok,” Elaine is saying, squeezing his hand again. “Well, it was awful. But we were doing ok. And you’re home now. That’s all that matters. That is _all_ that matters.”

After another hour of catching up on the bare bones of everything he’s missed, they make dinner, all crowding into the kitchen to listen to the six o’clock news.

“The Tories got into power,” Elaine informs him. “Unfortunately.”

“Bet my father’s happy,” John pulls a face, and she smiles again, turns to pass Mary the onions. Will is on the floor, crawling after a small, patient tabby cat John doesn’t recognise.

“I’ll bet he is.”

“Did you…”

“Not today,” Elaine says. “I don’t want to ruin this by talking about them.”

“Ok,” he replies, pulling her back into a hug.

Dinner is cosy, homely, and wonderful. He’d forgotten how much he’d missed pasta. Sayan chooses to sit on the back of Elaine’s chair with an arch _I like her_ in John’s direction. Will brings his toy plane to the table and swoops it in ever more complicated circles around his bowl, threatening to upend it. It feels so easy to be here, in this chair, in this _world –_ to slip back into his place, to quiet his ghosts and be in the moment with his beaming, shining wife and Mary with her quick grins and quicker brain and Will’s shyness disappearing with each passing second. It feels easy to leave Mary to the washing up and take Will up to bed, to sit on his floor whilst Elaine sorts out bath time, to listen as she reads him a story and tucks him up under his covers, to lean over and kiss his forehead like it’s an every-night occurrence rather than the tiniest, most beautiful of miracles.

When they get back downstairs, Mary has disappeared.

“She’s got the spare room at the back of the office,” Elaine says as they sink back into the sofa, closer this time. She’s practically on his lap, her hands tracing the lines of his face like she’s trying to memorise it again after all these years. “Do you mind that-”

“Love,” John says, and Elaine’s smile broadens at the endearment. “Of course not. I’m just glad you weren’t alone. So very, very glad.” He sighs, “I just…I feel so awful for leaving you and…”

“You didn’t leave. It was an accident.”

“I left on the expedition in the first place.”

“But we agreed, John. We talked about it. It’s not like you went against my wishes.” She knocks her forehead against his. “Shit happens. That’s life.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m a poet. You’ve got to believe me. This is our thing.”

“You’re being flippant.”

“I am,” she says, then suddenly serious. “I did feel abandoned. Terribly so. We made the wrong decision about the expedition, evidently, but back then we didn’t have all the variables, as you scientists would say. And you can’t predict the world and you can’t force it to dance to your tune. It was circumstance, not you.”

“Yes,” John says, then, knowing he’s being counterproductive, half-expecting Sayan to interrupt but she’s in the windowsill, half-asleep, “I wouldn’t blame you if you blamed me.”

“But I don’t.” Her eyes are very close and dark, a whole night sky. “How many times am I going to have to repeat that?”

“Once would have been enough,” he sighs, cups her face. “But that was before. I’m less certain now.”

“You did have the actual fabric of existence ripped out from under your feet. You’re allowed to be uncertain, love. I know you struggle with feeling like you have to _know_ all the time, but you don’t have to. And that’s ok. And I’ll repeat myself as long as I live, if that’s what it takes.”

He’s beyond words, pulls her even closer and wraps his arms around her ribs. She tucks her face into the side of his neck, and they sit there for what feels like hours, touching, breathing. He’s home. His home is in his arms and he is _never_ leaving her again.

Eventually, perhaps hours later, he says: “I need a shower. God I’ve missed showers.”

Elaine blinks as though she’s only just realised how bad he smells, wrinkles her nose.

“Maybe that’s a good idea.” Then, “I could come with you if you wanted. Remind you how they work after all this time.”

Her face is very close in the dim lamplight and he leans forward, presses his mouth to hers. She kisses him back, long and lingering and slow, and when they draw apart he smiles, listens to her breath hitch.

“How could I turn an offer like that down?”

*

He wakes to dawn dripping gold and pink through the curtains, too-soft pillows, Elaine’s arm around his waist, and a distinct rustling noise. When he opens his eyes, he finds that Will has somehow got their door open and is attempting to climb up onto their bed. He’s wearing Star Wars pyjamas and his bed-head is something to behold. It’s not a dream. This is real. He knows this, now, but still has to keep feeling for it, checking the shape of it, making sure and sure and sure. Elaine makes a sleepy noise, and then says half-into John’s shoulder, “What time is it?”

John glances at the clock. “Half-seven.”

“Ok. I’ll get up in a minute, Will.”

“We’ll get up,” Sayan says from the headboard where she’s been dozing. Will’s eyes round.

“The bird talks? The bird talks!”

“She’s not a bird,” John says. “Come on, young man. Let’s let Mum sleep in for once, shall we?”

He kisses Elaine’s cheek and slides out of bed, tucks the duvet back over Elaine’s shoulders and finds a t-shirt from the wardrobe. She’d kept all his things, like she always believed he was going to come home. He doesn’t have the words to express how much that means. Will slides off the bed too and runs to the door; John follows him, closing it gently behind and heading down the stairs. From the lack of a pair of leather loafers by the door and a warm coffeepot, a note propped up against it, John surmises that Mary has already left for work. The note reads: _made enough for everyone just in case John is as much of a coffee fiend as you, Elaine. Have a lovely day! M x._

“What do you normally have for breakfast?” he asks. He’s only ever been around local kids in warzones, and secondary school-age children before, doesn’t really know what he’s expecting of a four-year-old who is his responsibility.

“Hmm,” Will says, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Toast!”

“Toast? And what do you have on your toast?”

Will shrugs, and then tilts his head and chews on his bottom lip like he’s angling for something, or like he’s trying to make John guess. John doesn’t know which.

“Jam?”

Headshake.

“Butter?”

Will pulls a face.

“I could do eggs?” John says, hoping that Elaine and Mary haven’t trained Will into liking some ridiculously complicated breakfast only one of them knows how to cook.

“Yeah!”

“Ok, well if I do eggs, you’ve got to sit up here and help me because I don’t know where anything is. Deal?”

“Deal,” Will says, and lets John lift him onto the countertop.

Turns out that Will knows the kitchen pretty well and laughs a lot whenever Sayan opens drawers with her claws, so they have a fun time assembling all the things needed for scrambled eggs on toast. John shows Will how to crack an egg, and then whisks them together, tips them into the pan. Sayan takes up one of her favourite perches on his left shoulder. It still all feels dreamlike, uncanny, to be standing here in a wash of morning sunlight cooking eggs for his little boy, who is sitting right there, within touching distance, studying the scrambling process with intense interest.

“Are you my Daddy?” Will asks, very suddenly, and John looks up, tugs the eggs from the heat.

“Yes. I am.”

Will thinks about this for a bit as John butters toast, dishes the food up for both of them, finds juice for Will and pours coffee for himself. “Why did you go away?”

“I got lost. In the Arctic,” John says, not entirely sure how much Will is going to understand. “I never wanted to leave you and Mum. Did she tell you that?”

“Yes,” Will says, and then, practically, “It’s ok. You came back with a talking bird.”

John blinks at him, but Will is looking at him like coming back with Sayan completely absolves him of four years of painful absence. He doesn’t know what he was expecting but it wasn’t this.

“Can we eat breakfast now?” Will continues when it becomes apparent that John isn’t going to move.

“Yes we can eat breakfast,” John says, lifting him to the floor and taking their plates to the table. They eat, mostly quietly, Will humming to himself in between mouthfuls. Sayan flutters down to the table when they’re nearly done, and Will is all wide-eyed wonder.

“Do you know what kind of bird I am?” she says, moving closer. John watches her and she sends him a little, _trust me,_ nonverbally.

 _When do I not,_ he asks back and she ruffles her wings, amused.

“A big talking bird,” Will says through a mouthful of egg, and then, contemplatively, “with big claws.”

“Talons,” Sayan corrects. “And I’m an osprey.”

“Osprey,” Will repeats, slurring the pronunciation a little. “Why do you have big claws?”

“Because real ospreys eat fish, and they use the claws to catch them.”

“Fish are nasty,” Will says. “They eat your toes.”

“Do they?” Sayan blinks.

“Yum yum, toe sandwich. I saw a lady at the shops.”

“There’s a shop doing fish pedicures in the Westgate,” John hears, and looks up to see Elaine leaning in the kitchen doorway, wrapped up in a faded dressing gown and still wearing the silk headwrap she sleeps in. She stifles a yawn in her hand. John looks between her and Will – who now has Sayan on his lap and egg smeared halfway across his face – and feels like his heart is swelling too big for his chest. “Will likes to watch them.”

“Mummy, Daddy made eggs for breakfast and I’m holding his bird!” Will says excitedly.

“How lovely,” Elaine tells him, coming over to drop a kiss on his forehead, and coming over to kiss John properly. “Morning, darling.”

“Morning,” John says, tugging her down onto the bench beside him where they both watch Will have a loud hissed conversation with Sayan about dragons and what Daddy saw in the Arctic that he evidently thinks they can’t hear. Sayan begins telling him a story about armoured bears which Will is listening to with wide-eyed delight.

“Are you ok?”

“I’m more than ok,” he says, not taking his eyes off Will. Elaine rests her head against his shoulder. “I’m so happy I think I could burst.”

“Yeah,” Elaine murmurs. “Yeah, me too.”

*

Mary has the radio on in the kitchen and is busy chopping things for the bolognese when Elaine slips in, glass of wine in hand. She hadn’t wanted to leave the boys, but she feels bad about leaving Mary all on her own. Today has felt like a fever-dream, like everything is too saturated. They’d taken Will to the playpark and then walked through Oxford together to get lunch. She’d held John’s hand, and Will had insisted on riding on his shoulders. She’s so glad that Will has taken to having John home with easy acceptance; in her head, imagining it all, she’d always been scared that Will would be frightened and John would be hurt, that John’s homecoming wouldn’t be as joyous as it has been. But even though the voices are doing their level best to convince her otherwise, she knows she doesn’t have to be worried anymore. Today, Will has figured out that his Dad a) makes great scrambled eggs, b) knows how to stick sword-fight, c) loves to build complicated dens for him, and d) has a talking bird who lets Will carry her around, and e) is therefore his favourite person of all time. Elaine would feel slighted if she wasn’t so goddamn incandescent. John is _back_ after all these restless, worried, agonising years. He’s _home._ It’s almost too big a truth to get her head around.

She belatedly realises that Mary is grinning at her, half turns. “What?”

“You look so happy. It’s lovely.”

“I am happy.”

“You deserve to be happy.”

“Aww, shucks,” Elaine says in her best American accent and Mary whacks the dishtowel gently in her direction.

“Horrific.”

“I thought it was pretty good, actually.”

“Think again.”

“Cold, Malone,” Elaine laughs, takes another sip of her wine. They lapse into companionable silence; Mary humming along to the radio and Elaine listening to her son’s shrieks of laughter from the sitting room.

“I did want to ask,” Mary says after a while, the words ill-fitting and awkward. “Well. I was thinking of moving out. Maybe. Nothing’s confirmed, but…”

“No? What? You can’t move out. You’re my prisoner forever.”

Mary sighs. “I am serious, you know. Don’t you and John want space to be a family now he’s back?”

“You _are_ family,” Elaine replies, stubborn. “And if you want to stay, you should stay.”

“And has he-”

“Yes. We talked about it. And whose bed would Will jump on every Saturday if you left?”

“Yours,” Mary says, and Elaine rolls her eyes, fond. “I don’t _want_ to go, Elaine. I’ve loved living here. But I had to offer, you know?”

“I know. You’re too lovely for your own good,” Elaine says, shuffling closer to lean briefly against Mary’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine. There’s enough space for all of us. Your rooms are on the opposite end of the house from ours, so we’ve all got a bit of privacy…”

“Eww, gross,” Mary says, and Elaine pinches her.

“There are many things long-lost husbands are good for.”

Mary puts her hands over her ears, screws up her face in mock disgust and Elaine laughs. “I wouldn’t want to know about your sex life even if I _weren’t_ ace, thanks. It’s like thinking about my sisters. I repeat, _gross._ ”

“Suit yourself,” Elaine says. “I’m rather enjoying it, for my part.”

“I’m not surprised,” Mary wrinkles her nose. “Weirdo.”

“Like you can talk, scholar of the multiverse.” Elaine laughs. “Come on. Can you leave that for a few minutes? Let’s go see what havoc they’ve wreaked.”

*

Even by her admittedly-lax standards, it’s been a weird week. Mary contemplates both this and the board in her little home-office, which is covered in the last of the maths she needs for her thesis, chewing on her pen. About three days after John got home, some reporter at the BBC got wind of his survival and the entire press pack descended on the house to interview him about his miraculous return. After their slightly hurried war council as to what exactly the public story should be, she’d hidden in the office or at college, done tea runs and errands, and tried to make herself as useful as possible. Luckily, the press had believed the lie and after a couple of days seeing her best friend’s face plastered across the nightly news, the attention had shifted and normal life had resumed.

There’s a knock on the door, and Mary takes her pen out of her mouth. “Come in!”

The door creaks open and she turns to see John holding a tray. “Hi.”

“Um, hi,” she says.

“Elaine and Will are out,” he says, “and she said you were writing your thesis, so I thought I’d come and offer tea and moral support. If you want it, that is. I just noticed you didn’t come out earlier like you usually do.”

“Oh,” Mary says. She does usually emerge for a hot drink and a stretch break mid-morning, is surprised that he noticed she hadn’t today. “Yes. Tea and moral support would be nice. And an ear for this maths, if you’ve got five minutes. It’s driving me up the wall.”

His smile is wry. “My doctorate didn't really look at dark matter, but I can give it a go."

“Cracking,” she says and moves backwards so he can put the tray down, pour them both tea. He’s put some of the brownies Will was ‘helping’ with on the weekend on a plate for them too. She doesn’t know what she was expecting but it wasn’t this. John’s been perfectly friendly, but he’s got the kind of uncanny middle-distance stare of a person who has survived things no-one should have to. That, as well as Sayan, the weird tattoos across his knuckles and the scar on his temple make him feel slightly unapproachable, as though he only lets down his guard for a chosen few. In conclusion, it’s weird to see him sitting in the cluttered office that once belonged to him wearing a jumper she’s ninety-percent sure is actually Elaine’s, holding an Emma Bridgewater mug, and mouthing her equation to himself.

“Tell me about your whole project?” he says after a second.

“I’m working for the ZEPLIN-III,” she replies, tapping her pen against her fingers. “They’ve built a dark matter detector using xenon up in North Yorkshire, and I’ve been designing some of the experiments on weakly-interacting massive particles. I was getting interested in the intersections between dark matter and the theory of multiverses, which is what I’m trying to write on.”

“Which multiverse theory are you using?”

“Witten’s M-theory, currently. You know, the one with ten spacetime dimensions?”

“Yes, I’m familiar with that,” John goes back to her maths. “Talk me through it and I’ll see if I can ask useful questions?”

Several hours, cups of tea, and big sheets of paper later, they’ve made a small breakthrough. She sits back on her heels, traces her eyes over the calculations and notes one last time. John is a fantastic brainstorming partner; he speaks her language, sees her leap between theorems as a challenge to overcome rather than a presumption to pick apart. At one point, she prompted him into a fascinating tangent about what the Northern Tartar shamans taught him about consciousness, and Mary made a note in the corner of her notebook as an idea for further study after this project is wrapped up and submitted. Now, she adds ideas to it as her brain gathers speed, scribbling away and wondering absently whether research into the intersections between consciousness and dark matter is fundable.

“Mary,” John says after a second. She looks up, blinks equations out of her eyes. “Can I ask you something?”

“Um, sure,” she says, suddenly little bit apprehensive. The tone of his voice does not indicate physics. She wonders whether he’s going to ask her to leave, clamps down on the thought. If he is, it’s not the end of the world. It is his house after all and rent payments aside, a small part of her brain can’t come up with a good reason for why he’d want his wife’s best friend still under his roof. “Sure. What’s up?”

“I don’t want you to break any confidences, but…” he sighs. “Elaine’s not well.”

Mary exhales very steadily, a little surprised. She puts her pad down on the desk, untucks her knees and leans forward. She was wondering if he’d notice, is very glad that he has before she’s had to bring it up. “No. She isn’t.”

“I caught her counting the tiles in the kitchen the other day. She tried to play it off like it was nothing, but…”

“She’s always been a bit paranoid. And the post-natal depression really wasn’t helped by everything that happened,” Mary says. John’s eyes haven’t left her face, and she tries to meet them. “I think it might be OCD. She tries to hide it, but…well. She has to count tiles to keep Will safe or is convinced that picking up twigs the right way would bring you home. I’ve tried to tell her to get help but she won’t. I can’t force her, so I’ve just…been monitoring it.”

John breathes in, pained. Mary feels a pang of sympathy for him – lost, stuck, stranded, and now coming home to constant reminders of the pain his absence caused.

“And Will?”

“No idea that anything’s wrong. Not yet, anyway.”

“Ok. Good.” John sighs. “I’ll talk to her.” Then, “Thank you, for being with her. I know I haven’t said it yet, but I’m so…I don’t know what would have happened if she’d been on her own. I’m so glad she had someone here with her.”

“Don’t mention it,” Mary says, and then, at his raised eyebrow: “Seriously, I’m serious! This has been such a nice place to write my PhD. And Will feels like the nephew I never had.”

John smiles, bright and brief, like the photos Elaine showed Mary those first few months. In an abstract, logical sense, Mary can see _exactly_ why Elaine fell for him. “Well,” he says. “You’re practically family to them. My coming home doesn’t change that. You know you can stay as long as you want?”

“I do now,” Mary says, feeling her shoulders loosen just an inch. She meets his smile and he inclines his head. “Thanks.”

“How about we go get lunch,” he says, standing and stretching. “And you can help me figure out which area I need to catch up on first?”


	2. the window

**June 2020**

It is a golden June rush-hour, and Will is walking home from after-school boxing practise, kit bag bouncing against his back. One of the it-kids in the year above is throwing an enormous party tonight and he’s absently turning the possibility of it around in his head, half-paying attention to Alicia Keys’ new album as well. He thinks that some of them are such idiots to be messing around with alcohol and relationships at their age, knows that there will be a _lot_ of this if he goes. But his friends are going. And it might be fun. Thabisa says that his cryptid tendencies are always the worst when there’s a party on the horizon and it’s true – he’d much rather be reading or hiking or on some ridiculous adventure than drifting around in her shadow, listening to people share the same gossip and cause drama. There was a period a few months ago when someone found an old news article about Dad and his four-years-missing and the speculation had spread round the school – at parties, people would abandon the usual social hierarchies to crowd close and question him incessantly about it all. Will is not prone to wild flights of fancy and sticks diligently to the agreed-upon story about Dad’s miraculous escape from death, but he _is_ always quietly amused by it all. If only his classmates knew the truth.

The Friday night traffic is predictably loud and snarled up, and Will is in a gap between songs when he hears the screech of brakes. He twists just in time to see a girl bouncing off a car right opposite him, a magpie falling with her in a way he’s only ever seen one other bird do. His blood runs cold. He’s moving before he realises it, pulling Alicia out of his ears and sinking to his knees next to her. He can hear doors opening, adults shouting. She’s blinking, dazed – there’s a cut in her hairline. The bird has changed to a mouse, which is crawling up her dungarees.

“Lyra,” it hisses. “ _Lyra._ ”

A dæmon. Will was right. He says: “you need to _hide._ ” It turns beady black eyes on him with not enough urgency, so Will leans in closer. “I’m serious. People don’t have dæmons here. Get out of sight.”

It blinks once and disappears inside the girl’s – Lyra’s – shirt.

“Is she ok?” a white woman is asking, bending over next to Will. “God, she just came out of _nowhere._ Do we need to call an ambulance?”

“No, she’s ok,” Will says, then, a bit self-consciously as an idea suddenly flickers to life. “Lyra, what did Aunty Erin say about looking before crossing the road?”

“I _know_ ,” the girl – Lyra – says, pushing herself unsteadily onto her elbows and then up into a sitting position. Her eyes find his, all _who the hell are you,_ but her tone and facial expression are pitch perfect irritated younger relative. It’s quite impressive. “You don’t have to _tell me off._ ”

“Obviously I do since you just ran into traffic,” Will says.

“I was counting clouds!”

“You shouldn’t even be out on your own,” Will lies. He turns to the concerned driver. “She’s my cousin. She’s ill. I’d better take her home.”

“Are you sure?” the driver asks, in the tones of someone who really does not want to stick around but is offering out of bloody-minded English politeness.

“Yes,” Will says. “Yes, are you ok to walk, Lyra?”

Lyra is evidently about to say something else, but Will directs a shut-up-now glare her way, so she just mumbles at the floor something that could pass as agreement. Will gets up, picks up his bag and offers a hand to help her up and back onto the kerb.The driver gets back into her car. People stop staring out of their car windows, forget about the incident now that someone’s taken care of it. They cross the road and continue walking down towards the Wolvercote roundabout and home. Well, Will does. Lyra makes it about ten steps before her dæmon is wriggling out of her shirt again and hissing something into her ear before turning into a crow and flapping up to the low hanging branches above their heads.

“Come _on,_ ” Will says, antsy for reasons he can’t put a finger on. Luckily the only people around are in their cars.

“You’re the boy,” she says, running a hand through her hair and not appearing to notice that it comes away bloody. She’s maybe a year younger than he is and looks half-starved, all elbows and knees. Her denim dungarees and boots are both covered in mud, her hair is short and brown and messy with leaves tangled through it, and there are deep purple shadows under her eyes. This, with the streaks of blood smeared in her hairline, make her look more than a little bit feral.

“Excuse me?”

“The boy,” she repeats in a tone of voice that implies she thinks he is exceptionally slow. He fights the urge to bristle like the cat when she sees something she doesn’t like. “I was _told_ to find a boy who knew about dæmons. Thought it was proper stupid until I met the kids in Ci’gazze. They didn’t know about dæmons. You do, even though you don’t have one. You don’t have one, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

The girl hums. “Thought not. I’m Lyra Silvertongue. This is Pan.”

“Will Parry,” he says on autopilot.

“Where are we?”

“On the pavement next to the Wolvercote roundabout,” Will says facetiously before he relents. “Oxford.”

“ _This_ is Oxford?”

“Yeah.”

“It can’t be. _I’m_ from Oxford.”

“Yeah, well obviously there are two of them,” Will says, not sure if he’s liking how he’s nearly snapping at Lyra, at her unreasonable possessiveness. She doesn’t even seem to notice his tone of voice, but he can see his Mum’s raised eyebrow in the back of his head, takes a breath. “Come on. We shouldn’t have this conversation here.”

“Where _should_ we have it, then?” Lyra says, mulishly, but she runs to catch up with him.

“My house. My dad has a dæmon. He’ll know how to help you.”

“Who says I need help?” Lyra snaps, then quickly follows that up with, “is he a scholar?”

“He…yes. I guess so.”

“Good. I need to talk to him.”

“…okay,” Will says. “It’s not far.”

They walk in silence, Lyra matching every stride of Will’s despite being nearly a foot shorter than him. Will keeps glancing sideways at her, trying to catch sight of Pan who has turned back into a mouse and scrambled into the baggy front pocket of Lyra’s dungarees, nose appearing every so often to sniff at the air. He’s never seen a dæmon do that before but remembers Sayan saying something once about children’s dæmons not taking on a fixed form until they hit puberty.

“Would mine still be changing?” he’d asked her.

“Probably, just,” Sayan had said, hopping from sofa to sofa. “Though it would be soon, I’d imagine.”

Wolvercote itself is quiet and they reach his house without incident. Will fishes his key out of his blazer pocket, unlocks the front door, toes off his shoes.

“Take off your shoes,” he says, and Lyra gives him a narrow-eyed stare like she’s trying to psych him out. He meets it calmly, half-blocking the door until she does what he says. If she leaves mud all over the hall, it’ll be his job to sweep it up. “You can hang your bag up here.”

“No,” she says, so immediate it’s almost vicious.

Will blinks. “Ok, have it your own way. Dad? Mary?”

“In the office!” he hears Mary yell from somewhere inside the house.

He leads Lyra through the hall, aware of the way she’s glancing around at everything and probably judging it – the art on the walls, the plants Mum looks after lining the windowsill, the bright rugs his parents had collected from all over the world before he’d been born. The office door is half-ajar and he creaks it open. Mary and Dad are where they are usually if they’re not at St Peter’s; Mary scribbling something complicated onto the whiteboard and Dad propped up against the desk, mug of tea in hand, both of them knees deep in some theoretical conversation Will has not the faintest hope of following. Sayan is perched on the shelf Mary had installed for her, contributing every so often. She’s mid-sentence when they enter, and Lyra pops out from behind Will. Pan is now a snow-white mammal wrapped around her neck, and then he flows to the floor and turns into a red panda. All of the adults fall into silence.

“Dr Parry?” she says before Will can even open his mouth. “I need to talk to you about Dust.”

From the emphasis she puts on the word and the look on Dad’s face – surprised, _rattled_ – Will guesses that she’s not talking about the kind of dust he gets rid of with the hoover every Sunday morning.

“Lyra ran out into traffic on Sunderland Avenue,” he says into the silence. “I saw Pan. I thought you would know what to do.”

Dad regains composure quickly, meets Will’s eyes. “You did the right thing, Will.” Then, to Lyra, “and Dr Malone is probably better placed to answer your questions. I just help her.”

“Her?” Lyra says, skeptical.

Will doesn’t hide the way his shoulders stiffen this time. Dad and Mary both look surprised, and then Dad quickly shifts into the disappointed disapproval that’s become legendary amongst Will’s teachers and classmates. Lyra backtracks quickly.

“I mean we don’t have women scholars in my world. Not ones that research Dust anyway.”

“No,” Dad says after a beat, as though Lyra has reminded him of something he’d rather not think about. “I imagine you don’t. We do here, though, and as I said – Dr Malone is the leading expert in the field.”

“Mary,” Mary says. “She’s a kid, not a funding body, John,” then, “Lyra, did you come here all by yourself?”

“Yeah,” Lyra says. “I had to.”

“You had to?” Mary echoes, and then, belatedly, “you’re bleeding!”

“I’m fine, it’s old,” Lyra says dismissively, and launches into an explanation involving something called Rusakov particles and a split in the sky. Will thinks about listening, but he knows she’s lying about the cut on her head, and her collarbones are really too prominent for a thirteen-year-old. He’s sure Dad and Mary would usually be all over the “look after strange child from another world” show, but when they’re on a joint physics bender real life concerns often fail to register. He quietly backs away and ducks back out into the hall, goes upstairs to quickly get out of his school uniform and fetch the first-aid kit, and then down into the kitchen. He doesn’t know what food Lyra will be used to, but after a quick perusal of the fridge decides that everyone likes omelettes and they’re easy. He cracks eggs and pours juice and cuts an apple up for himself, dishing everything up and carrying it back into the office. Everyone has managed to take seats in his absence, but they are all still deep in conversation.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says, pressing the door closed behind him and putting the tray on the desk, and Dad blinks, looks at him, and then laughs quietly.

“Sorry,” he says to Lyra. “Where are our manners?”

“At least Mum isn’t here to tell you off,” Will says, amused, passing the plate and cutlery to Lyra. She glares down at it for a second, confused, and then up at him.

“What is this?”

“Haven’t you ever had an omelette before? It’s eggs.”

“We should probably wait for your mum to get home before we continue this,” Mary says thoughtfully, capping her whiteboard pen and stealing a piece of Will’s apple.

“You’re not his mother?” Lyra asks through a mouthful of eggs. “Ow, Pan, stop clawing me.”

“Stop being rude, then,” Pan says.

“It’s not a bother,” Mary says. “And I’m not. His mum is still at her writing group. And when you’re done with that, you should probably have a shower.”

“Can you sort out her cut while you’re up there?” Will asks. He can feel Lyra glaring at him, doesn’t bother to acknowledge it. “I brought this down but it’s probably better to do it in the bathroom. It’s not old.”

“Sure,” Mary says.

“What’s a shower?” Pan asks, sitting up. He’s still a red panda. Will didn’t realise how adorable they were in real life, all fluffy tail and flat, cat-like face.

“Like a bath but standing up,” Will tells him.

“I don’t need a bath,” Lyra objects, smearing more egg across her chin. She’s cleaned her plate in record time, and Will’s pleased he thought to make food. She evidently needed it.

“You do,” Pan says.

“No I don’t.”

“Do.”

“Don’t.”

“ _You_ haven’t had to hide in your own shirt recently, have you?”

“People in this world are generally clean,” Dad says with a quiet finality that has Lyra subsiding. “You won’t want to stick out.”

“Fine,” she says, resigned.

“Ok,” Mary stands up, adjusts her headscarf, grabs the first aid kit. “Come upstairs with me, Lyra, Pan. You boys can start on dinner.”

The two of them disappear and Will picks up Lyra’s empty plate, carries it back into the kitchen. Dad clears the omelette pan into the dishwasher, picks up a cookbook to start rifling through it. Will gets a glass of water, picks up his phone, shoots a text off to Thabisa: _can’t come tonight, family thing._

She texts back immediately. _Will!!_ 😭 _I was going to set you up!!_

_Sorry! You know what family is like._

_Yeah, yeah. Have fun gutting bunnies or whatever weird shit your dad has planned this weekend. Wish me luck with Maya._

_Good luck with Maya. See you Monday_

_See you_ 🌈 _._

“And then we plunged over the waterfall and fell to our deaths, the end,” Dad says, and Will looks up.

“Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Yes, I could see that. Are you ok?”

“Yeah, just…supposed to be at a party tonight. I think Thab’s upset with me.”

“You can still go if you want,” Dad says reasonably. “Bike over after tea and I can pick you up at midnight. Nothing’s going to happen until tomorrow.”

“Thanks, but I just…” Will pushes a hand through his hair, pads over to glance at the recipe Dad’s chosen and then over to the fridge to start pulling out ingredients. “I don’t want to. Not now.”

“Ok. Let me know if you change your mind,” Dad says, reaching out for the onions Will passes him because Dad has eyes of steel and doesn’t seem to be affected by the horrible little things. They chop their respective vegetables in companionable silence for a few minutes whilst Will gets his words in the right order.

“She’s from the world you went to, isn’t she?” he asks, eventually, looking up from his carrot.

“Yes, she is.” And then because Dad’s never been one for lying or withholding information unless he has a good reason to, “You remember that explorer I told you about a few times? Asriel Belacqua?”

“The one you didn’t like?”

Dad smiles, but it’s a little tight. “Yes, him. He’s split open the sky at their north pole, created a bridge from their world to the crossroads world. Lyra followed him through.” At Will’s frown, “She’s his daughter, apparently.”

“Why’s she come _here,_ though? She recognised me. Said she was looking for a boy who knew what dæmons were.”

“I honestly have no idea,” Dad says.

“I suppose we’ll find out over dinner,” Sayan says from her perch on the back of one of the chairs. She sounds far too serene for this ridiculous turn of events, and Will stares at her.

“You suppose?” he asks, incredulous. “Am I the only one kind of freaking out here?”

John leans over to pull Will against his side in a half-hug, and Sayan makes a cooing sound low in her chest.

“No, you’re not,” he says, after a second. “But there really isn’t much we can do about it until we know what’s going on.”

“Making uninformed decisions is only going to lead to situations we don’t want to be in,” Sayan agrees, a little pointedly, and Will feels rather than hears Dad’s huff of laughter.

“That was _one_ time.”

“And?” Sayan replies. “Proves my point.”

Dad lets go of him to take his shoulders, look him straight in the eyes the way he does when he wants Will to feel reassured. “We’ll sort it out, ok? It’s going to be ok.”

Will tries to believe it. He really, really does.

*

“They _what_?”

Lyra picks up another forkful of whatever it is they’re feeding her – weird strings she can’t describe covered in a meaty sauce – and crams it into her mouth. Will’s mum – _call me Elaine_ – and Sayan, Dr Parry’s dæmon, are the ones who have spoken in tandem, but the rest of the adults have this horrible, shocked look that mirrors the words too. Elaine reaches out to take Dr Parry’s hand across the table. Pan answers for her from the back of her chair because she’s too busy eating and he had words with her in the shower about eating with her mouth full. It’s not her fault that the food is the best she’s eaten in _weeks._ “They were cutting kids from their dæmons.”

Lyra swallows. “With a big silver knife,” she adds. “They nearly did it to me and Pan, but we got away.”

“But why?” Elaine asks, eyes wide.

“Dust,” Lyra says sagely. “The Magisterium hates Dust.”

“Lyra’s world is ruled by a church body called the Magisterium,” Dr Parry says, probably for the benefit of the others. “What happened afterwards, Lyra?”

“Well…” Lyra doesn’t really want to bring up Mrs Coulter, not now. She’s still trying to get her head around it. But she can tell them about Iorek and Lee and the death of Iofur Raknison and because the alethiometer told her to tell the truth, she decides that she has to tell them about Roger too but she skates the topic, doesn’t tell them what he was to her. Will is still mostly an infuriatingly quiet blank but the adults are obviously enraptured by it all. She adjusts the story to their expressions, basking in the glow of being the centre of positive attention.

“Sounds like you’re quite the adventurer,” Mary says when Lyra is done, and Lyra preens. Pan turns into a magpie.

“Though I’m sorry you had to go through all of that,” Elaine adds, which is a confusing thing to say, because Lyra had to bully the adults in her world to let her go North with them. “Must have been terrifying.”

“Not really,” Lyra lies. “I’m used to it.”

Dr Parry raises his eyebrows at that but doesn’t say anything. He has the kind of eyes that see right through whatever yarn Lyra is spinning, just like Iorek Byrnison, but hasn’t been calling her out on it; she’s decided to treat him with wary respect. Lyra continues. “So because no-one would tell me what Dust is, I asked the alethiometer and it sent me here to find out.”

“The what?” Elaine and Mary ask at the same time Dr Parry says, “You have an alethiometer? May we see it?”

Lyra nods, pulls it out of her pocket, unwraps the black velvet covering and lays it on the table. They all peer at it, interested, even Will.

“It tells the truth,” she says. “I can prove it if you like.”

“Ok,” Dr Parry says. “Go for it.”

“Ask me a question,” Lyra says, and after some shuffling Mary says:

“What was I doing before I was a physicist?”

She goes down the levels of the alethiometer, as easy as breathing, and then says, “A nun.”

Mary blinks. “That’s…not at all creepy.”

“It won’t answer if it thinks I’m being nosy without a reason,” Lyra says. “And sometimes it just doesn’t give a clear answer. Like now. Like what to do now. It’s still repeating itself about coming here.”

All four of them exchange a speaking, loaded glance, and eventually Dr Parry says, “Yes, ok. That’s probably sensible.”

“What?” Lyra demands.

“Dad can do astral projection,” Will says, and then at Lyra’s frown, “travel in his mind. To other places.”

“I became a Tartar shaman whilst I was in your world,” Dr Parry explains.

“No way! _You_ were a ferocious Tartar?”

 _Wow,_ Pan says in her head. _Don’t get on his bad side, Lyra._

“By adoption,” Dr Parry says, amused, getting up from the table. He kisses Elaine, clasps Mary’s shoulder, ruffles Will’s hair. “I’ll go upstairs and see what I can find out.”

“Mary and I will clear up,” Elaine says as he leaves the room. “Will, can you make up a bed for Lyra in the sitting room?”

“Ok,” Will says, and when he gets up, Lyra follows him. The sitting room is across the hallway and is medium-sized and cosy, just like the rest of the house. There’s a patterned rug on the floor in between two divans, and a fireplace, and blinds with little squares cut in them pulled down over big windows. She takes a seat on the rocking chair and Will starts pulling out one of the divans into an actual bed. Lyra stares at it. He disappears and comes back two minutes later with his arms full of sheets. “Want to help?”

“I don’t know how,” she says. Then, when he doesn’t respond, in a half-hearted attempt at friendliness, “what do _you_ do all day?”

He’s silent for a little while, then says: “School. See my friends. You?”

“When I’m not in the North?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I climb around Jordan College a lot. Fight the townies and claybed kids and the gyptians. Explore. Hide from people. We stole a gyptian barge once, sailed it all the way to Abingdon Lock before they caught us.”

“I don’t think we have a Jordan College here,” is apparently the only thing Will can think to say. Lyra frowns at him.

“Oh.”

“But it sounds fun,” he says, listless, like he’s humouring her. “I’m going to go upstairs and do my homework before it gets too late. Sleep well.”

“You too,” Lyra says, silently seething. The second he’s shut the door she rounds on Pan. “Well he’s _boring._ ”

“He’s normal,” Pan corrects. Then, “yes. A bit. Maybe he’s got hidden depths.”

“No he doesn’t. He’s as shallow as…as…” she flounders, “ _the trill mill stream_.”

“That’s been dry for years.”

“ _Exactly._ ”

“Lyra,” Pan says, half-heartedly. He turns into a lion for height and starts to explore the room. Lyra gets up and joins him, tugging one of the blankets Will left around her shoulders. There is a strange box with a flat screen that doesn’t react when she prods it, a whole stack of books she has little interest in, a shelf full of ornaments, and another one full of photos. She kneels down in front of it and starts to look at them, one after the other. Will with his arm around a girl with black-brown skin and knotted hair. Elaine with a group of brown women, all laughing together with wine glasses in their hands. Will and Mary on top of a mountain. All four of them on a flat boat in the middle of a wide river. Elaine and Will throwing mud at Dr Parry, all three of them gasping with laughter. Lyra feels like someone has lit a fire under her, smouldering away. How come boring Will gets to have all this?

At the back, there’s an _old_ photograph, of Dr Parry and Elaine, much younger. Lyra picks it up and looks at it. Elaine is wearing a pretty white dress and Dr Parry is in a military uniform and they are radiant, looking at each other like they can’t believe this day is happening. Tucked into the back of the same frame is one of them again with a baby that must be Will, fast asleep in Dr Parry’s arms with Elaine adjusting the blanket around him. Their faces are so full of love that Lyra feels her own heart twinge, wonders if her parents had looked at her like that when she was born and quickly dismisses the thought as stupid. Of course they didn’t. How could her parents look at anything with the amount of love in this photo? What must it have been like for Will, growing up with this much love? Pan scrambles into her lap, turns into a dog and noses at her chin.

“Two of the best days of my life,” Lyra hears, and she scrambles upright, hurriedly puts the photo back.

“I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s fine. They’re on display for a reason,” Elaine says. “Where’s Will gone?”

“He said homework,” Lyra says, and Elaine smiles, shakes her head.

“That boy. Too diligent by far. Is the bed ok? I’m sorry we don’t have a spare room. We’re not used to visitors here.”

“It’s fine,” Lyra says. She carries Pan over to the bed and sits solidly on it, to prove to Elaine that she means it. It’s a very fine bed. She’s slept on a lot worse.

Elaine smiles at her. Her hands are clasped together, like she’s not sure what else she should do with them. “We’re all going to turn in early tonight. I can find some books or films for you if you’re not ready to sleep yet…”

“No, we’re ready to sleep,” Pan says for her. “It’s been a long few days.”

“I can imagine.” Elaine fidgets with her fingers for a second, with the gold ring on her left hand. “Look, I just wanted to say Lyra, Pan…I don’t know what John’s going to find out. But whatever it is, we’ll do our best to keep you safe, ok?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be just fine,” she says, pretending a bravado she doesn’t feel. The old her really would have bristled, she knows, spat like a wildcat at the very thought of adults doing such a thing. Safety is the opposite of the freedom she’s had her whole life. Safety is wearing a dress and following the rules and feeling totally, utterly stifled. But the old her hadn’t seen Bolvangar, hadn’t seen Iorek and Iofur fighting, hadn’t seen her best friend torn apart and murdered before her very eyes. The world is becoming increasingly terrifying, and it’s rather nice to have someone explicitly looking out for her.

“What Lyra means is that we really appreciate it, thank you,” Pan says, flicking his tail into her face exasperatedly.

“No worries.” Elaine says, with one more long, slightly unreadable look. “Goodnight.”

*

Lyra hurtles into wakefulness, sitting straight upright and clutching her sheets, looking around at the unfamiliar room. Her eyes catch on the black-out blinds, the cities and stars cut into them; she hadn’t seen it yesterday, but the sight reminds her of that first photogram Lord Asriel had shown the scholars, the sight, strangely, calms her down. Everything crashes back down over her head. The Parrys. Meeting Will on the road. The massive, loud, fast car. Pan has turned into a cat; his tongue is rasping against her chin and she pulls him close.

“It’s alright,” he’s saying. “Just a dream, Lyra. We’re safe here.”

“Are you sure?” Lyra whispers into his fur. She can still hear the buzzing of the spy-fly that had caught up to her in Ci’gazze in her head, the fury of it, the way it had divebombed her and nearly knocked her off her feet. If her mother’s spy-fly can find her, then her mother can find her. That’s part of the reason she ran, most of the reason she found the window in the first place.

“Yes. They’re good people. I wish more people were like them.”

“The gyptians are. Most of them, anyway. And Lee Scoresby is.”

“There still aren’t enough of them.”

“No, Pan,” Lyra says. “There aren’t.”

He pauses. “Shall we check the alethiometer again? Just in case?”

“Yeah,” she replies, and fumbles for her bag, pulls it out and crosses her legs, focussing on the needles and formulating a question she’s not used to asking: _what now?_ The alethiometer gives the same answer it’s been giving to her questions about Dust – _find the boy who knows about daemons, he will lead you to a scholar, tell the scholar the truth –_ but as she watches, the needle swings to another two symbols, back and forth and back and forth. _Stay with the boy,_ it says. _Stay with the boy._

“Is that Will, do you think?” Pan asks, peering over her arm at it.

“He’s the only boy it’s talked about,” Lyra hums. “And why?”

Her fingers are moving before she really thinks about it, and the alethiometer answers: _he will need a guide._

“To _where_?” she says aloud, stares at it, but the needle has fallen still, and no matter how much she asks the question again and again, it gives her the same answer. She growls at it and shuts the case heavily, pushing it back into her bag. “ _We_ have to be a guide for boring Will?”

“Unless another boy appears,” Pan says, jumping into her lap. “Apparently so.”

“Urgh,” Lyra replies, throwing herself dramatically against the back of the divan. She’d had half-formed thoughts about going and assassinating her father for what he’d done to Roger but nothing real or solid; she should be glad about a plan, a course of action, but all she really wants to do is scream.

“Well, the alethiometer hasn’t led us wrong yet,” Pan says reasonably. “We should trust it until we have cause not to.”

“Fine,” Lyra grouches, folds her arms and stares at the ceiling. After a while just sitting there together, stewing in the indignity of it, she hears the front door open and close, voices disappearing into the kitchen. Her stomach starts to growl, and Pan purrs a laugh.

“You’re a bottomless pit,” he says, and Lyra jumps up, pulls the blanket around her shoulders in lieu of a robe, and picks up her bag.

“You would be too if you could eat their food,” she replies, pushing her irritation to the back of her mind. Pan doesn’t bother with a verbal response, just jumps off the divan and follows her out into the hall and then into the kitchen doorway. She’s never seen a kitchen like this before, all yellow cupboards and wooden floors and copper fittings, a jug of flowers on the windowsill and a bowl of fruit next to it, the French windows at the end opening out onto their patio and big, wild garden. Mrs Coulter hadn’t _had_ a kitchen in her apartment, the gyptian cooking arrangements were necessarily economical, and Jordan College’s kitchen was just huge.

Last night, she’d watched Will stirring something at the stove and Dr Parry dishing up those weird strings _._ When Will had come over to put the pot down on the table, she’d leaned over, suspicious, asked: “You cook your _own food?_ ”

“Yeah,” he’d replied, eyebrows drawing down. “Who were you expecting?”

“Uh…the servants?” she’d said, and he’d given her an infuriating, judgemental kind of look so she’d sat down and decided not to pursue the conversation further if he was going to be like that.

Now, the kitchen is full of warm light the colour of weak tea. Elaine is sitting at the table, half-hidden behind a big paper and drinking from a spotty mug. Will and John are laughing about something, both of them in weird clothes – t-shirts like ones Will was wearing yesterday and shorts made of weird crinkly material. Both of their faces are shining and red and Will’s wearing a band of blue fleecy material around his head.

“Did you find anything?” she asks, Pan winding around her ankles, and they all look up. Elaine smiles at her.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Dr Parry, upon further inspection, looks very tired. He runs a hand through his hair. “Yes. But we’ll have a proper talk in a bit. Have breakfast first.”

“Can I have the shower first, Dad?” Will asks. Then, half-turning, “Morning, Lyra.”

“Why are you all sweaty?” she asks, knee-jerk. Behind her, Pan sighs. Will blinks at the suddenness of the inquiry and Dr Parry starts laughing. Sayan ruffles her wings and looks as amused as a bird of prey can manage.

“They go running on Saturdays, the crazy people,” Elaine says. “Why a 10km run is better than a lie-in, I have no idea.”

“Running is fun,” Dr Parry says, in a tone of voice which suggests that this is a long-worn argument. Will rolls his eyes and leaves the room.

“Only an ex-Marine would say that.”

“Will isn’t an ex-Marine.”

“Yeah, but you’ve corrupted him.”

“You’re one to talk, love, the boy’s book-mad.” Dr Parry says, half-disappearing into a cupboard. Elaine smiles at Lyra again.

“Sit down, Lyra, Pan. John will sort your breakfast. What do you want? We’ve got cereal, or we can do eggs and toast, or we might have some bacon around…”

“Will ate the last of the bacon the other night,” Dr Parry says.

“Eggs would be nice, thank you,” Lyra says, as politely as she can, belatedly remembering Mrs Lonsdale’s endless lectures about politeness, and the example Mrs Coulter had set. _Manners are vital,_ she’d said once. _You can get away with a lot if you’re polite about it._ Maybe if she’s polite they’ll get on with it and tell her what’s happening.

They don’t.

Mary comes downstairs at the same time as Will. Will looks clean and keyed up and energised, Mary looks like she’d rather be anything other than vertical, pours coffee into a mug and clutches it like a lifeline. They all eat breakfast in companionable-ish silence, the adults and Will making idle chit-chat about things in Elaine’s paper; people and events that Lyra both doesn’t know about and doesn’t particularly care about either. Eventually, they all decide to go out into the garden and sit down to talk. Lyra takes the swing seat next to Will and the adults pick the boring chairs, faffing around. She clenches and unclenches her fists around her bag. Adults are like this. She knows that. She can’t let it get to her.

“So, Dad,” Will says. “Anything interesting in the spirit realm?”

Dr Parry smiles again like it’s another family inside joke, but there isn’t much good humour in the expression. “Plenty, as it happens, and not much of it good.” He rubs his eyes, and then says like he’s having trouble believing it still, “Lord Asriel, Lyra’s father, is building an army. Forces across the multiverse are rising to his call.”

“Right,” Mary says after a beat. “That is…more dramatic than I was expecting, I’m not going to lie.”

“Me too,” John says. “Things have deteriorated significantly since I last went.”

Lyra twitches in the weighty silence that follows, but before she can get there, Will is asking, “What exactly does that mean, Dad?”

“How best to…” Dr Parry sighs. “There have always been two forces at war with each other. You can see it through our history, but it’s much more apparent in other worlds. There are those who want mindless, unconscious obedience from all sentient beings, and those who want us to be free, to ask questions, to explore.”

“Like the Catholic Church historically,” Mary says, quietly.

“Or fascism,” Elaine adds.

“Indeed,” Dr Parry says. He obviously understands what both of those things are; Lyra certainly doesn’t, but can guess they aren’t good from the tone of voice in which they’re said. “Or Lyra’s Magisterium. Or the innumerable worlds labouring under total oppression to rulers or other religions.” He pauses, “Strange as it might sound, our world is one of the last safe havens for freedom of thought. If the war doesn’t begin soon, it’s likely that the forces of darkness will come for us next.”

“ _Our world_ is a paragon of freedom,” Elaine says, disbelieving. “You’re serious?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Dr Parry replies, grim. “I really had no idea it had got this bad.”

Elaine slides her hand across the table and takes his. Her face is slightly grey. “So this Lord Asriel is mustering an army to defend freedom, then?”

“He wants to kill the leader of the other side. Lyra will know it as the Authority, but we would more commonly use _God._ ”

There are several heartbeats of stunned silence. A bird screams a warning in the big oak tree by the fence. Pan huddles closer into Lyra’s lap, and Lyra pets his fur, not entirely sure how to feel. She’s not surprised. She can say that with confidence; she’s well aware of what her father is capable of and it doesn’t feel like the biggest step onwards to imagine him putting a knife through the Authority’s heart. The others, however, seem quite horrified at all of this. Elaine has gone slightly grey, Mary is staring with a fixed intensity at the slats of the table, and Wil beside her is barely breathing.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Dr Parry adds after a second, looking up to meet Lyra’s gaze. She shrugs.

“Is there anything else we need to know?” Elaine asks after a long pause.

“Yes,” Dr Parry says. “Rumours, though. Nothing concrete.” When they all look up at him, he continues, “the spirits were talking about a weapon called Æsahættr. Lord Asriel is going to need it, and the one who bears it. We must get our hands on it before they do and take it to him.”

“What is it?” Lyra says at the exact same time Will blurts out, “ _we_ have to?”

“I had to come back before I could find out,” Dr Parry says to Lyra, and to Will, “If we can. The things I saw out there…” he shakes his head, “I don’t even think Asriel knows he needs it. We might be the only ones on our side to know. And they’re coming, soon.”

Lyra shudders at the thought of that. The other side – that’s Mrs Coulter, and the Magisterium, and the Gobblers. Awful as her father is, there is no _way_ her mother is getting her hands on another weapon. She hates her father for what he did, but he’s apparently on the same side of this as all the people Lyra holds dear; she might have to live with this to make sure that no-one else gets killed the way Roger did.

“But we wouldn’t have the first idea where to look,” Mary is saying, but Lyra has already pulled the alethiometer out, ticking the needles to the sword, the compass. The alethiometer swings in dizzy circles for a second before repeating the same pattern as before, _Stay with the boy, he will need a guide._

“It’s not telling me,” Lyra scowls. “It won’t tell me _anything._ ”

“Will you-” Mary starts, turning to Dr Parry and Sayan.

“Perhaps,” Sayan answers, balanced on the back of Elaine’s chair. “But we can’t go back for a few days, not until we’ve recovered properly.”

“A few days?!” Lyra asks, voice rising, picking up Pan and standing abruptly. Dr Parry had said _soon,_ that they were coming _soon._ That means her mother could be here with them, and what if her mother finds out she’s here? What will she do then? She’s safer moving, safer with a goal and a plan, and this imperfect thing, betrayal of Roger though it is, will keep her safe. “A few _days_? We don’t _have_ a few days! Who knows when my father’s going to need it?”

“Rushing into something is only going to cause more of a mess,” Dr Parry says, and his calm is too much, is fuel to Lyra’s fire.

“No, it’s not! We have to stay _ahead_ of them!”

“And we will by finding out more, Lyra…”

“Lyra,” Will is saying but she’s not listening to him, she’s not listening to any of them. She knows that if she stays she’s going to break her hand on something or scream, so she dashes back into the safety of the house before they can see the angry tears springing to her eyes. They all let her go and she disappears back into the still dark living room, throws herself onto the unmade bed, screams into the pillow.

“Lyra,” Pan says, and she feels his cold nose pressing into her armpit. “Lyra, talk to me.”

She turns her face onto the pillow so she can see him better. “Why are they so calm about this? Why can’t they see that this is too important to wait?”

“They’ve not seen what we have,” Pan reasons. “And you haven’t told them about Mrs Coulter and the spy-fly yet. They don’t know what we’re running from, or that it’s personal.”

“Should I?”

“I don’t think it would change anything now.”

“I just…I wish the alethiometer would tell me what to do. How to avoid _her._ It’s _always_ told me what to do.”

“And what if what we have to do is wait for Will or whoever it is to need a guide? We’re safe here.”

“Urgh,” Lyra says and disappears back into the pillow. “I hate waiting.”

“I know.”

“I don’t like not being in charge. I don’t like adults.”

“You do like adults. These adults are nice.”

“But they make me wait for things.”

“And right now, it’s what we need,” Pan noses her again. “We’ve got a good food and a safe bed. We haven’t stopped since the Samoyeds took us prisoner. It makes sense to rest while we can.”

“I suppose,” Lyra says, sitting up again and blowing her hair out of her eyes like a horse. Pan puts his paws on her knees, and she starts to pet his ears. “The food is really good.”

“The food is really good. Let them look after us, and then if they’re still being too slow we can always go back to Cittagazze, boy or no boy,” Pan says. “Ok?”

“Ok,” Lyra says. “We should go back out, shouldn’t we?”

“Yes, I think so.”

She scoops Pan up and he changes into a very fluffy cat, swishing his tail as she pads back through the kitchen and out into the garden again. None of them have moved, but Elaine touches her elbow gently as Lyra walks past, sits back down next to Will, who is swinging the seat back and forth with one bare foot. A bee zigzags past their knees between flowerpots full of bright colours. Pan settles himself into a purring ball on Lyra’s lap. Everyone still seems quite tense, but they’re pretending not to be.

“I’ve got to go finish some experiments on the Cave before it’s ready to show Lyra,” Mary is saying. “And I might be able to dig some more useful things out about dust. I’ll be at the lab all day so just rule me out until dinner.”

“Sure,” Dr Parry replies. “I was thinking we could take Lyra to the Pitt Rivers.”

Elaine scrunches up her nose. “That colonial monstrosity? Really, John?”

“It has things relevant to Dust in it. Skulls like mine. It might turn up something of us on this Æsahættr thing.”

“Fine. You owe me.”

“I know.”

“What’s happening?” Pan asks Will because he can feel Lyra’s curiosity and knows that there is no way she’s going to ask Will herself, not after she’s decided that he’s boring.

“We’re planning what to do whilst we wait,” Will says in an undertone. He looks very resigned. “Dad wants to take us to the Pitt Rivers Museum. It’s his idea of a bonding experience. Means he likes you.”

Pan starts to wash himself in a way that means he’s pleased. Lyra, jolted out of her irritation with Will, looks over at him. He’s examining a scab on his knee with great interest.

“What’s a Pitt Rivers Museum?” she asks.

“The Pitt Rivers,” Will says. “You’ll find out, won’t you?”

*

Will weaves an absent path through the Pitt Rivers, stopping every often to look at something that has caught his eye. He’s been here a few times before. School visits tend to be uncritical attempts to inspire an understanding of world culture, family ones are much more explosive. His parents have a love-hate relationship with the place; he could recite Mum’s rant on colonial legacies and stolen objects in his sleep. Nevertheless, she does sometimes find it inspiring, and Dad’s apparently found it useful to draw connections between the other world he ended up in and theirs. Mum doesn’t begrudge him that. So they keep coming.

Today, Mum is in one of her hate periods so has gone to be inspired by the dinosaur skeletons and taxidermy in the Natural History Museum next door. Dad has parked Lyra in front of a case full of skulls and is talking to her, probably about something deep and physics-related. Will pauses in front of the model boats, and then, for some reason looks up. There’s a man leaning on the rail at the entrance to the Natural History Museum, leaning with a sense of ease and power, like he could make someone dance to his bidding with a snap of his fingers. He’s got very dark skin and has his hair all natural. He’s wearing a suit Will bets is very expensive and is fiddling with something on a chain, and there is a slight movement in his sleeve, something glinting up it. He’s looking, unblinkingly, at Lyra and Dad who are now bent over the alethiometer, the gold flashing in the lamplight. Will watches him for a good five, six minutes, dread increasing, and then the man abruptly straightens; before Will can look away the man catches his eye, gives him the slightest smile like ‘you caught me’ before turning and leaving.

“Hey,” Will hears next to his ear, and it’s Mum, notebook tucked under one arm and adjusting her headwrap. “Reckon we can drag them away from the stolen human remains yet?”

“Coffee time?” Will asks.

“Coffee time. I want to get Lyra some clothes that actually fit her as well.”

“We can try,” Will says, and they pick their way through the other visitors. Mum wraps her arms around Dad’s waist from the side, rests her chin on his shoulder.

“Yes, I’m done if Lyra is,” Dad says before Mum even needs to say anything, leaning his head against hers briefly.

“Yes if there’s food,” Lyra replies, dragging her eyes away from the skulls and tucking the alethiometer back into her rucksack.

“There is definitely food,” Mum says. “Come on, Lyra. Walk with me and we can figure out where to go.”

She kisses Dad’s ear and then Lyra wriggles past and the two of them are disappearing up the steps and back into the sunlit, kid-filled room. Will and Dad follow at a more sedate pace.

“Dad,” Will asks as they make their way onto the lawn, still feeling uneasy. “There was a guy watching you and Lyra earlier. Did you notice?”

“Watching us?”

“Yeah. He was leaning on the railing. He stared at you two for ages.”

“No, I didn’t,” Dad says, a little bit worried. “What did he look like?”

“Black, darker than me and Mum. Short natural hair. Pretty tall. Rich, I think.”

Another parent might have told Will to stop worrying, but Dad just hums. “Ok. We’ll keep an eye out for him.”

“Ok,” Will says, and then Dad starts a conversation about the skulls and Will tries to put his worry to the back of his head. It’s still lurking as they wind up for lunch at the Turl Street Kitchen, tucked into one of the mismatched tables and introducing Lyra to their ridiculously good pie menu. It’s still lurking as his mum takes Lyra off to buy some clothes and he and his dad head in the direction of Blackwells to wait for them, Will drawn to the poetry and contemporary literature, and Dad disappearing down the stairs towards the science section. Eventually, his mum and Lyra come back, hands full of bags and Lyra looking kind of bashful and pleased, her face flitting into belligerence when she catches him looking. He’s never met anyone like her before; she’s defensive at the best of times and aggressive at the worst, but she’s obviously so very independent and confident and bold that he can’t help admiring her just a bit. He doesn’t really know what he’s done to make her dislike him, but he’s trying not to let it bother him, not that much. He’s got a life, he’s got friends – this is a ridiculous, kind-of-terrifying situation they’re all in, but no matter what Dad finds out, Will has to go back to school on Monday. At some point, Lyra will move on. It doesn’t matter if she likes him or not.

His mum gets talking to one of the managers she used to work under and agrees to sign a few of her books since she’s here. He continues paying attention to Bernadine Evaristo’s new book, remembers hearing snatches of her and Mum’s conversation out in the back garden last summer, their laughter. Lyra is hovering at a slight remove, and when he looks up she shrugs.

“Books don’t look like this at home,” she says, unexpectedly.

“No?”

“They’re older. Bigger. Less…colourful,” she pauses. “I don’t like them very much.”

“Maybe you’d like our books,” Will says. “There are some good stories nowadays. Adventure. Fantasy. Look, I’ll show you.”

Mum is still chatting, and he thinks Dad might have fallen into a black hole downstairs, so he gestures with his head, shows Lyra the young adult and fantasy sections. It’s not _really_ his thing, but Thabisa has force-fed him enough novels for him to know his way around the YA and Fantasy sections. He tugs down the first Legacy of Orisha book and passes it to Lyra.

“See what you think,” he says, going back to Bernadine and trying not to pay attention to her out of the corner of his eye. She fidgets with it for a bit and then sits down heavily in the chair opposite and opens it. He can see Pan poking a shiny nose out of her bag.

Five minutes later, when his mum has unearthed his dad and come to fetch them, Lyra hasn’t looked up once.

“Found anything?”

“We don’t have this one at home, do we?” Will asks.

“No. I should read it too, see what she changed.”

“Can we get Lyra’s book for her too?”

“Of course.”

They manage to pull Lyra from her book long enough to pay for it. When they get home, Dad makes a pot of tea and they all settle down with their books in the sunshine. Will loves this about his family – sometimes they go on ridiculous wilderness adventures, and sometimes they spend all weekend reading. A couple of hours dribble past, and then there is the sound of the doorbell.

“I’ll get it,” Will says, stretching and unfolding from the grass. “Mary never remembers her key.”

He pads down the stone steps and back into the kitchen, leaving the book on the side and into the hall. When he opens the front door, it isn’t Mary. His stomach drops through the floor.

“Afternoon, sorry to disturb,” the police woman waiting on the other side says. “But does a Lyra Belacqua live at this address?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Trill Mill stream is an underground river that flows through Oxford. Apparently someone discovered skeletons in a rotting punt on it in the early 1900s - there are plenty of ghost stories!


	3. the knife

“Are you sure about this, Mr Scoresby?” Serafina asks. Her eyes are centuries-dark, solemn, like history is watching him out of them, judging his decision.

“Sure as anything, ma’am,” Lee replies. Hester is leaning against his leg, grounding. “I know that little girl. There’s no way she _didn’t_ go through the portal. And anyway, she needs someone looking out for her. God knows her own parents won’t.”

“It would be useful to have eyes on the other side.”

“I am going to find Asriel,” the other witch queen, Ruta Skadi, says. She’s shorter than Serafina, but carries herself powerfully, a storm raging beneath her dark skin. “We could travel the first leg together. I will conceal you from the Magisterium airships.”

“I would be honoured,” Lee says, and Ruta gives him the scarcest of nods.

“Kaisa will go with you too,” Serafina says. “That way you’ll be able to communicate with us. I must council with the other witch queens.”

“Thank you.”

“Safe travels, Mr Scoresby. Find her before they do.”

*

The police station is bustling. John holds Lyra’s shoulder as they follow the police officers – an East Asian woman and a white man – through the corridors and into an interview room on the first floor. It’s all institutional carpet and desks that remind him of his school days, officers moving through in pairs and threes, radios chattering, everyone hard at work. They’ve been very civil so far, but none of this makes sense. Will insists that Lyra came straight through the window in front of him, and Lyra insists that this is her first time in their world. What the police want with her is anyone’s guess and he hopes it’s something easily resolvable. They don’t have time to get caught up in the criminal justice system.

“Please, take a seat,” the man says. “Can we get you anything to drink?”

“No, thank you,” John says. Lyra is all coiled rage at his side, clutching the bag that has both Pan and the alethiometer in it. At home, everyone panicking, he’d pulled her aside to say _I don’t know what they want but you’ve got to trust me, Lyra, ok?_ She’d met his eyes and nodded – not that John is sure she meant it at all. He doesn’t think he’d trust easily in her situation, not someone she’d known just twenty-four hours, but in a situation like this he’ll take whatever he can get. He hopes it will be enough but knows that it probably won’t. At least Sayan is home, helping Will look after Elaine. Encounters with law enforcement are never good for her anxiety; he’d hated to leave her, but it’s some comfort to know that Will’s not alone. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”

“Of course,” the woman – the more senior officer, John notes – says, pulling a file towards her. “We’ve received a report from Sir Charles Latrom that you have taken one of his objects. An alethiometer. You dropped a report card with your name on it when you were speaking with him, Miss Belacqua. Here.”

“No,” Lyra snaps, and the officer raises her eyebrows, shuffles the papers in front of her. After a second, she produces a report card from The Cherwell School, a perfect fake right down to the last detail. Every single alarm bell in John’s head is screaming as he picks it up to examine it more closely.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he says, trying to keep his voice as level as possible. The alethiometer. Jesus Christ – he shouldn’t have let Lyra use it in public, but they’d both been too interested in what it could tell them. Damn it all to hell. He wonders whether this man is who he thinks it might be, the one Will was telling him about, but he can’t be certain. What he can be certain of is that someone else in this world perhaps knows the value of the alethiometer and is certainly willing to use underhand methods to get it. He looks at Lyra, but she pulls a face he interprets as _no I don’t know who Sir Charles Latrom is either._ “Lyra’s not been off on her own all weekend.”

“He says it happened at Cherwell on Friday afternoon,” the woman says. “He was giving a talk to Lyra’s year, and got chatting to her afterwards.” Then, to Lyra, “he was very complimentary of you, you know.”

It absolutely cannot be true, but John knows he can’t say a thing to counter it without mentioning the other worlds, the war. He can feel Lyra shaking.

“Lyra,” he says, softly, hating himself for what he thinks he’s going to have to ask her to do.

“I _never,_ ” she says, pleading. “It’s mine.”

“No, it’s not,” the woman says.

“You don’t understand,” Lyra continues like the policewoman hasn’t spoken at all. “My father gave me it before he died. It’s special. It was made by one of my ancestors and has been kept safe for centuries by my family. It don’t belong to him and anyway I don’t know no Sir Charles Latrom because-”

“Lyra,” John interrupts before she can mention the window or Cittagazze, or anything beyond the bounds of suburban Oxford life.

“Because I _don’t,_ ” Lyra finishes, folding her arms and slumping back.

“No, it’s not,” the woman says. “Sir Charles has all of the papers in order.”

Lyra is looking around now, not even listening; John can see her checking out the distance to the window and the door, knows she’s thinking about bolting. The male officer, who’s been silent up until now says abruptly, “the door and window are locked, Miss Belacqua.”

The female officer leans forward. “Listen to us, Lyra. Sir Charles has agreed to be very generous and not press charges if you just give it back. But if you don’t, he’ll have to take it to court, and you could be facing time. Do you understand me?”

“But it’s _mine,_ ” Lyra insists, and John’s heart breaks for her. “The alethiometer is _mine._ ”

“Lyra, you need to listen to me,” the woman says. “We’re on your side.”

“You ain’t,” Lyra says loudly. When she turns to John, her eyes are full of tears, and she says, suddenly quiet and very small, “Do I have to?”

He knows she wants him to say no. He knows she wants him to tell her that the police are wrong, that they can walk out of there and not face any consequences and he can’t. There are moving pieces here than he can’t get a handle on without more information. Whether they’ll be able to get the information is another story altogether, but he knows people who know people. It’s not impossible. What can’t happen is for this to go any further, not without jeopardising everything. His chest feels tight, painful, but he meets her eyes as steadily as he can, knowing that she’s going to see this as the ultimate betrayal.

“Can you give it to us, Lyra?” the woman says.

“It’s at home,” Lyra replies, obviously a last-ditch attempt to buy time.

“Then you won’t mind us going through your bag, will you?” she asks, and Lyra stiffens abruptly, shoots John a venomous look, and then reluctantly opens her bag, draws out the alethiometer in its velvet wrapping. She puts it on the table and folds her arms tightly, ducks behind her hair.

The woman peels back the velvet, glances down at the solid gold; the man makes a face like he would be whistling if he wasn’t in uniform.

“Wow.”

“Indeed.” The woman folds the velvet back over and puts it on a shelf behind her. “Thank you, Miss Belacqua. We are going to have to issue a formal caution but after that, you are free to go.”

“What’s the process?” John asks, hoping it will be quick, hoping he can get Lyra out of this bloody room as quickly as he can. He’s still reeling. How could this happen so fast?

“I just need some details,” the woman says, and John nods, wishes they’d thought up a story for Lyra before. Lyra nudges his knee with hers and then before he knows it, she’s answering all the questions for the police officers with such scowling, sullen authenticity that all John has to do is provide their address and keep his face neutral. Half an hour later, he apparently has a goddaughter who grew up in a troubled home and landed on his doorstep when her parents died, and really, he thinks that might be the most plausible thing she’s come out with in the last twenty-four hours despite being totally untrue.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” the woman says eventually after both of them have signed the caution form. “And keep your hands to yourself next time, Miss Belacqua.”

“I will,” Lyra says with terrifying sweetness, looking like she’s seriously considering biting one of the officers, grabbing the alethiometer and disappearing into summer sunshine never to return. John takes her shoulder and steers her out of the interview room before she can act on any impulses, back out to the street. He hails a taxi.

“We’ll talk when we get home,” he says, and she nods tightly, her fists clenched in her lap.

The second they get in the front door, Lyra explodes, whirling around and looking like she wants to claw his eyes out.

“Why did you do that? How could you make me give it up?” she screeches, “Who is this man and why does he want my alethiometer?”

Will and Elaine are suddenly in the hallway too, drawn by the commotion, and Pan has wriggled free from the bag, has turned into a leopard and is roaring right along with Lyra. Sayan swoops into the tumult, lands on John’s shoulder.

“Pan, stop that noise,” she orders; miraculously, Pan listens and turns into a porcupine. Lyra subsides, red-faced and panting.

“Why?” she demands.

“Because the police matter here, Lyra,” John says, as calmly as he can. “I don’t know what’s going on either, but I do know that had we refused or lied or allowed it to go any further than it did, you could be put in prison.”

“I could have escaped.”

“No, you couldn’t. It’s different here, ok?”

She screams again, more out of frustration than anything else now, John thinks, and presses her hands to the side of her face. When she looks up again, she asks, “but you believe me, right? You believe that it was mine?”

“Of course,” John says.

“The Master of Jordan College gave it to me to keep safe,” she insists. “I promised I’d keep it safe.”

Her face suddenly crumples and she’s sobbing, lurching forward. Will is closest to her and catches her by the elbows, pulls her into a hug more on instinct than anything else. John looks at Elaine over the kids’ heads – she looks exhausted, but steady enough, and they both step forward to join the hug too, careful to avoid Pan who is tangled around Lyra’s feet.

John doesn’t know how much time passes. His heart aches for this girl who might be brave and determined and quick, but at the end of it all is thirteen years old, out of her world and her depth, and just trying to figure out her place in events beyond nearly anyone’s comprehension. He’s unnerved by everything he’s learnt and he’s forty-eight, has been in more shit-shows than he can count.

The door squeals on its hinges and a trickle of wind dances across the back of John’s neck.

“Um, hello?” Mary says, and the hug disintegrates. John and Elaine step away and then Lyra extricates herself, swiping furiously at her eyes. “What happened?”

“The alethiometer’s been stolen,” John says. “How about sit down and figure out what we’re going to do about it.”

*

When Will comes back downstairs with his laptop, everyone has settled in around the kitchen table with hot chocolate and the biscuits he and Mum had made as a distraction technique while Dad and Lyra were with the police. Mary shuffles over to make room for him, passes him a mug and then leans over his shoulder as he closes down an essay and opens up Google because someone with a knighthood is a public figure, and they’ve been learning research in ICT class. He types in Charles Latrom and then his blood runs cold and he looks up at the faces of his family.

“It’s him,” he says, directly to Dad. “The guy from the museum, the one I told you about.”

“The _what_?” Mum, Mary, and Lyra say together. Dad runs a hand through his hair, sighs like it’s all just been confirmed somewhere in his brain.

“Will spotted a man watching Lyra and I at the Pitt Rivers earlier. This man, apparently. He must have seen the alethiometer there. It’s definitely something to do with Lyra’s world. He wouldn’t even know what it’s called if he were from here.”

Will spins his laptop around so the others can see the guy. “Wikipedia says he’s a collector and a philanthropist. Got a CBE for services to charity. Personal friend of David Cameron. Prominent funder of the Tories.”

“What great choice in friends he has,” Mum mutters under her breath. She hasn’t let go of Dad’s hand since Dad and Lyra got back. She’d teetered on the edge of a panic attack whilst they’d been gone, but Will and Sayan had managed to keep her from actually falling. Baking has always been a good distraction.

“I _know_ him from somewhere.” Lyra is frowning. There are still tear stains on her cheeks. Pan has turned into a mouse again and is perched on her shoulder, silently watching the proceedings. Will had been shaken by her screaming breakdown; he’d guessed the alethiometer was important to her, but that had been on a whole different level. He wonders whether there’s something else going on, something she’s not told them.

“I don’t know,” Pan answers an obviously silent question. “Sorry, Lyra.”

“It’s ok,” Mary says. “It’ll come back to you, maybe.” She taps her fingers against the table. “Maybe we could just go talk to him?”

“Talk to him?” Mum asks, incredulous, at the same time Dad says, “It’s not a bad idea.”

Will pulls the laptop back, keeps scrolling for anything else he can find. Sir Charles Latrom is not exactly hiding from the internet. He apparently came to Will’s school on Friday, not that Will pays much attention to what the year 7s and 8s are up to.

“He lives in Old Headington,” he says, clicking onto a lifestyle magazine article on the man, glancing over the enormous house, the photographed collections. He’s obviously very powerful. His social media accounts are full of polished pictures of him at political events, meeting the Queen, cutting ribbons. He seems like a very bad man to piss off; Will doesn’t like the idea of going near him, quite frankly, but then he wouldn’t have to. His parents would never let him face down that much danger without a _very_ good reason. “And there are several pictures where you can see a snake.”

“A dæmon?” Sayan asks.

“Maybe.” Then, “Yes. I think I saw it with him today.”

“He could have you arrested for real this time,” Mum says, voice taut and scared. Her knuckles are ridged beneath her skin, and Will can feel her knee tapping under the table.

“For asking to speak to him?” Dad shakes his head. “He hasn’t put out a restraining order on us. If he asks us to leave, we’ll leave.”

Everyone is watching them quietly. Mary is warmth pressed against his shoulder, Lyra is still red-eyed and shaking. The weekend is getting weirder and weirder. Will keeps thinking he has a handle on how he’s supposed to feel about it all, and then the world turns upside down again and he has to find new footing. Really, he wonders whether he’s just going to have to take dizzy adrenaline rushes as a new default setting.

“You’re not going on your own,” Mum says eventually.

“No,” Lyra says. Her voice is resolute, and she lifts her chin. “I’m coming with him.”

“Is that wise?” Mary asks.

“It’s my alethiometer. He knows who I am, obviously.” Then, “I’ll behave. I promise I’ll behave.”

Dad gives her a measuring look and then nods. “Fine.”

“Should one of us come too?” Mary asks. “Just in case?”

“I don’t know,” Dad says. He looks up, meets Mary’s eyes. “Lyra’s world is very patriarchal, and if he’s really from there he won’t respect women. In this case, it might be more sensible to play the game on terms he’s expecting. Unfortunately, he’ll probably respect me in a way he won’t respect either of you. And Sayan’s no stranger to fighting should things go south.”

“If you’re sure,” Mary says. Mum still looks unhappy, all tense shoulders and thinned lips, but she’s nodding too. “Ok.”

“Ok. We’ll go now.”

“Now?”

“Get it done, right?”

“I’ll do more research on him. Mum, want to help?”

“I’ll make dinner,” Mary says, and Dad gets up; Mum follows him into the hallway, but Lyra lingers, watching as Will types away. He can feel her eyes on his bent head.

“It’ll be ok, Lyra,” Mary says. “We’ll figure out how to get it back.”

*

The drive over to Old Headington is quiet. Lyra and Pan spend most of the time staring out of the window, so John talks to Sayan in his head. They run over what they know, potential plans of attack, and he tries determinedly not to think about Elaine and the very reasonable worries she has about all this, about the potential danger they’re getting into. He has to treat this like an operation, he can’t allow himself to worry. He forces himself back into the present.

 _It’ll be alright,_ Sayan says. Her wing clips the side of his face as he rounds Barton Lane into the bit of Headington his parents used to live in before they abandoned it for a more prestigious house out in the countryside.

 _I’m not a negotiator,_ he responds.

 _You did well enough with hundreds of Marines,_ she reasons.

_Yes, a load of cocky twenty-one-year olds._

_I’m trying to be comforting. Obviously it’s not working._

_It’ll be fine. It has to be, right?_

_Yes._ She nips his ear. _It will be._

The house is set back from the road behind a perfectly proportioned front garden. John would have thought a knight and multi-millionaire would live down in Park Town, the millionaire’s triangle, but it is quieter up here. The house is gorgeous, and there is a Tesla parked in the driveway, and John thinks that his father would be having palpitations at the sight of it all. Of course, his father wouldn’t be here, would turn his nose up at Sir Charles’ skin colour and probably find a way to class him as nouveau-riche. John doesn’t know why he’s thinking about his father. Being in proximity to extortionate wealth makes his mind skip back.

He and Lyra climb the stairs. Pan, mirroring Sayan, is a kestrel balancing on Lyra’s shoulder. John rings the doorbell, and quickly there are footsteps, the door opening. The man from all the pictures is there in a causal jumper and slacks, all gentleman-of-leisure. He’s nearly completely expressionless, but John thinks he catches a self-satisfied gleam in the man’s eyes.

“Ah. Lieutenant Colonel Dr Parry. And Lyra. I’ve been expecting you. Do come in.”

“Thank you,” John murmurs, noting that Sir Charles doesn’t seem at all nonplussed to see the dæmons.

_That clears things up,_ he tells Sayan.

 _Be careful. He’s probably done his research,_ she thinks back.

Lyra’s shoulder knocks into his elbow. Her face is very set. They are guided through into a reception room below ground; it’s all dark and modern and sleek, full of cabinets, a whole collection on display. John recognises a few religious items from the northern Tartars, hears Elaine’s voice in his head saying something biting about appropriation. Sir Charles settles himself down on one of the sofas in the middle of the room and gestures for them to do the same. John glances around, clocks the exits and potential weapons, tries to disguise it as an admiring glance. His eyes catch briefly on a map of Oxford pinned to the wall. Someone has drawn two circles in golden ink on it, one on the ring road near Wolvercote and the other in Iffley.

“Please, take a seat. What can I do for you?”

“I think you know why we’re here, Sir Charles. Shall we dispense with the pleasantries?”

John tries to keep his voice as light and as pleasant as possible, sits up with military straightness. Sayan stays on his shoulder; John can hear her watching the snake just visible in the sleeve of Sir Charles’ jacket, see the movement of it in his peripheral vision.

“As you wish,” Sir Charles says, casual as anything. He reaches over to the table next to him, pulls the alethiometer out of a drawer. “I’m so glad to finally have this piece for my collection. It’s a remarkable piece of craftsmanship. Only six were ever made. But I suspect you know that, Lyra.”

“And it’s _mine,_ ” Lyra hisses. She has evidently forgotten her promise to behave. “You _stole_ it.”

“To the contrary. I think you’ll find I have all the verified documentation to prove it’s been in my family’s possession for hundreds of years.”

Lyra nearly leaps off the sofa at him, but John grabs her shoulder, forces her to sit down. If Sir Charles’ documentation is as good as the fake Cherwell report card he’d given the police, they haven’t got a hope of protesting it.

“May we see those?” he asks through gritted teeth. Lyra jerks away from him, and John slants a sideways glare in her direction.

“By all means,” Sir Charles says. He hands John a wallet. “They are copies, of course. The real documents are locked away.”

“Naturally,” John says, pulling them out, glancing down at them. As expected, they look very real – a little battered around the edges, a splodge of ink, very old.

“Of course you could take me to court,” Sir Charles says, as John hands the papers back. “But I doubt you’d want to expose anything about Lyra, about our world, about your little trip through the multiverse.”

“Would we be able to buy it back off you?”

“For several million you don’t have.”

“You’ve done your research,” John says. Sir Charles gives him a careful half-smile, inclines his head. He watches them for a moment. John watches him watching, watches him clock the way Lyra is fidgeting with her t-shirt, the way both dæmons are puffed up and hostile, the way she’s measuring the distance between herself and the alethiometer.

“There is, however, a trade I would accept, were you so willing,” Sir Charles says after a moment.

“What?” Lyra demands immediately, leaning even further forward. Sir Charles raises his eyebrows but doesn’t comment on her tone of voice.

“You both know of the city of Cittagazze in the crossroad world?”

“No,” John says.

“Yes,” Lyra nods. “Came through it.”

“Well,” Sir Charles says, shifting infinitesimally to address Lyra. “There’s a tower, guarded by stone angels. It used to belong to their philosopher’s guild, you know, before they destroyed themselves. In it, there is a knife. Bring me that knife and you can have you alethiometer back. I’ll destroy the papers. No questions asked.”

John watches him, watches the way his dæmon flickers back and forth. He doesn’t trust this man, not as far as he could throw him, but Lyra has lit up. He knows she’ll agree to anything to get the alethiometer back; he also knows that with a deal like this, there has got to be a catch.

“Why can’t you get it yourself?” he asks before Lyra can.

“These days, adults enter the crossroads world at their peril,” Sir Charles says. “I don’t know if Spectres were around when you crossed through, Dr Parry, but they’ve multiplied exponentially in recent years. It would be suicide to try.”

“Spectres?”

“You didn’t encounter them. Lucky. They’re evil creatures. They attack one’s dæmon, drain you of all your conscious thought until you are just a shell, a body. Living, just. But children are immune. I suppose Lyra here hasn’t even seen one, and she won’t until her dæmon settles. No-one knows the reason why. Perhaps you and Dr Malone’s fascinating research will bring some clarity to the issue.”

“Perhaps,” John says, repressing a shudder. He hadn’t realise those things he’d encountered all those years ago had a name. The thought of more of them is beyond terrifying; his whole being shrinks at the thought of facing them again. Then, as Lyra opens her mouth, he interjects, “We’ll discuss your offer, Sir Charles.”

“See that you do,” Sir Charles says, handing him a card from an inside pocket. He offers his hand and John shakes it, wondering if this is what the negotiators in Bosnia felt like when facing down Milosevic. John is profoundly glad the Marines didn’t have to balance this kind of high-wire duel of words, is in newfound awe of the people who do _._ “Goodnight, both of you.”

*

The kitchen is increasingly feeling like the world’s most homely, claustrophobic war council. Elaine feels the weight of the space pressing in around her, the pressure of it shifting and changing before her eyes, the voices seeping in through the cracks in the windows and crawling into her ears. She doesn’t blame Lyra for bringing this change, but the sly voices in her head – rearing their ugliness into the light for the first time in _years_ – certainly do. _He’s going away again,_ they hiss. _He’s going to leave you._ She concentrates hard on her peas, on making sure they line up. If they line up, John won’t go. If they line up, all of this about the forces of darkness and a war on God will just disappear.

“Hey,” Sayan says quietly. She’s hopped onto Elaine’s lap, talons as gentle as possible, pushes her face into Elaine’s. John’s hand has slid onto her knee, and she takes it, interlaces his fingers with hers. “You ok?”

Elaine, interrupted, forces herself to breathe the way her therapist taught her and then nods, pulls a face. Sayan nudges her gently, wordlessly comforting. Mary shifts in her seat so that her shoulder is pressed against Elaine’s. Elaine breathes again. This is nothing like last time.

After a moment, she tunes back into the conversation, absently petting Sayan’s neck feathers to keep herself grounded, earthed.

“We could just _go,_ ” Lyra insists for what feels like the hundredth time this evening. Her face is blazing. It’s easy to forget that she’s only thirteen, and Elaine makes a promise to herself that she is not _going_ to forget. Lyra might have survived a lot already but that doesn’t mean Elaine is at all comfortable with letting her throw herself back into more danger without looking first.

“We’ve gone through this,” John says, patiently. Will is twirling his knife between his hands, looking thoughtful and only half like he’s listening. Elaine doesn’t blame him, not really. He was supposed to have a quiet weekend after the hiking trip last week – not be landed in what wouldn’t be out of place in a fantasy novel. She wishes she could doubt it but knows she can’t – can’t doubt the truth of what’s happening, can’t doubt the good they could do. They have to take it seriously. There is literally no other option.

Lyra pulls a face just this side of rude.

“Lyra,” Mary says. “I know you want it back but waiting to find out more information is sensible.”

“Just because you can’t go,” Lyra snaps, sliding down in her chair. “I know Ci’gazze, I know the kids that run it. I could just walk in and get the knife, easy.”

“What if it’s not there?” John challenges, a little tougher, more experienced Marine than concerned parental stand-in. She squeezes his fingers. He squeezes back. “What if something is guarding it? What if something goes wrong? You’d be on your…don’t roll your eyes at me, Lyra. I was a soldier; I’ve done ops like this before.”

“We need to explore all our options,” Mary repeats. “There might be a way to get to it without you having to go alone.”

“Without the alethiometer we won’t be able to find out,” Lyra says. Her eyes are blazing. “You shouldn’t have made me hand it over.”

John sighs, scrubs a hand through his hair. “I’ll scry tomorrow. We’ll find out what we can.”

“You have to trust us, Lyra,” Elaine says, quietly. “We want you to get it back as much as you do.”

“Well it don’t feel like it.” Lyra pushes her chair out with a screech, stands up and stalks off without another word, banging the kitchen door behind her. Elaine and Mary sigh in tandem, and then Mary catches her eye and rolls them. Incoherently, Elaine thanks whoever is listening that so far Will’s teenage years have been relatively smooth sailing.

“I’m going to go to bed too, if that’s ok, unless you need help clearing up,” Will says, stretching. When Elaine shakes her head, he smiles quietly, expression quite blank the way it always is when he’s freaked out about something. She wishes she could reassure him, knows there’s nothing she can say. All they can do is stick together and support each other as best they can. “Thanks for dinner, Mary. See you all in the morning.”

“Sleep well,” Elaine says, and he leans over the table to press a kiss to her cheek before putting his plate on the side and following Lyra out of the kitchen door, closing it carefully and quietly. They hear his feet on the stairs and then Mary stretches, groans.

“What’s the bet she’s going to make a break for it in the middle of the night?”

“High,” John says. “Very high. God, I could’ve handled that better.”

“You did fine,” Elaine says. “We did fine. She can be quite difficult, can’t she?”

“You don’t say,” John rubs his eyes. “Not that I blame her, but still. The world isn’t as black and white as she wants to believe it is.”

“We can lock everything and hide the keys tonight. We should, actually,” Elaine says. “I don’t like the thought of her running off into something and getting hurt where we can’t go and get her.”

“Nor do I,” John runs a hand through his hair. “We can do that for tonight. But we’ll have to come up with a satisfactory solution. We can’t keep her prisoner.”

“Of course not,” Elaine says. Her foot has started tapping. She’s mostly distracted now, but she can still hear the voices, faint echoes on the wind, feels the urge to arrange the washing up in the right pattern and shifts closer to John instead. Mary gives her a look and then yawns, pointedly. Elaine knows she’s making up a gracious excuse to leave them alone with each other, is struck by a renewed pang of gratefulness for Mary Malone and everything she’s done.

“I’ll go do that now, hide them under my mattress. Sleep well, guys.”

“We’ll clear up,” John says, and Mary smiles at them both, goes and shuts the door behind her. The second she’s gone, Sayan flaps free of Elaine’s lap and John pulls Elaine into his, wrapping his arms around her. She presses her face into the crook of his neck, breathes him in – coffee and laundry powder and that vaguely woodland-scented aftershave she got him for their first Christmas together and he hasn’t changed since. She remembers their first embrace – in Blackwells, after four years of letters – like it was yesterday. She remembers their first hug after he’d come home from the other world, thin and slightly haunted and every hopeless dream come true. Holding him always makes the voices run scared for the hills, as though his steadiness is a candle and they can’t bear the light.

“I’m scared,” she says, eventually, emerging.

“I know,” he says. There are lines around his eyes and mouth that she has traced the deepening of over the years, the life etched in his skin. She touches one of them now, carefully, follows it around one eye and then the other. He holds still for her, one hand on her waist, breathing in time with her. “Me too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. This is bigger than us. Bigger than Lyra. And we’re two of perhaps six people in this world who know anything about it. That probably means we’re going to be involved.”

“It usually does in novels,” Elaine says, and he smiles at that, quicksilver and tired, and she has loved his smiles for twenty years now, and his willingness to be vulnerable around her, to be frightened, to be _human._ So many men are too scared of that ever to let their defences down. “No avoiding it, then.”

“I don’t think so. And…” he pauses, “I want Will to grow up in a peaceful world. A free one. If that means taking Æsahættr to Asriel, then so be it.”

“Will we be able to find it, do you think?”

“Between scrying and alethiometer, it’s very likely.” He pauses, “you’ll come, if we find it?”

“Do you think I’d let you leave me behind again?” Elaine asks, indignant, and John smiles again, presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Then, “it’s weird, isn’t it. All this fate. I never thought it would bother with me, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just…” she huffs, lets her brain begin to wander and knows that John will follow, “You’re the kind of person to have a fate. I think Will is, as well, one day. But I thought I was just the chronicler, putting everything down on record before the world forgot it.”

“Maybe fate wants to make a point,” John tells her. “Maybe fate wants to prove to you that chroniclers are heroines too.”

“Maybe.”

“I think so. I think you’re a heroine.”

“You would.”

“Of course. I just wish you’d believe it too.” He traces a finger over her eyebrow. “How’s your head? I know it’s not been easy, but…”

“Not so great, the last few days.” She sighs. “I’m hearing the voices again. Getting the compulsive feelings. Well, you saw at dinner. Prime example. I’ll make an appointment with Ifeoma on Monday, but I’m just…” her voice cracks. “I can’t lose you. Not again.”

He leans in, brushes his mouth against hers, lightly, carefully, and then says: “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I promise that we are going to die together in our nineties in a villa outside Verona, just like we decided on our honeymoon. If Will wants to provide us with grandkids, they’ll be there with him. Mary too, if she’s still around. We’ll have the sun and the sea, and fifty more years of adventures behind us because we are going to survive this, ok? I am not going _anywhere_ without you.”

“Goddamn the English language for not having enough words for feelings, stupid stiff upper lip,” Elaine says heatedly, and kisses him properly this time, wraps her arms around his neck and holds him close.

“I love you,” he repeats against her mouth. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re going to make this right.”

*

Lyra lies on the sofa bed, twitching and listening to everyone go to bed. Mary and Will turned in ages ago, but Elaine and Dr Parry stay in the kitchen for a while together, and then they spend ages getting up the stairs and going back and forth between the bathroom and their bedroom. She waits a full ten minutes after she stops hearing noises, just in case. Pan turns into a bat and listens intently for a few minutes.

“All clear?” she asks.

“All clear,” he nods.

“Ok,” she says, swinging herself upright and grabbing her coat and bag. She peels aside the living room door and tiptoes to the front door, which is locked like she expected. She tries the kitchen door next but that’s locked too.

“Try the windows before you force anything,” Pan whispers. “The bathroom window is big enough for us to get out of.”

She nods and they creep carefully upstairs, careful of any noise, and tiptoe over to the bathroom. The window is locked too and she resists the urge to scream. Why are they doing this to her? The landing window is too small, she’s not trying Elaine and Dr Parry’s bedroom for love nor money, but the room Mary had pointed out as Will’s is half ajar, light spilling out onto the landing. She tiptoes over, curiosity briefly outweighing her anger, and peers through the crack. He’s kneeling with his back to her, head bent over a…bag? There’s a coil of rope in plain sight on his bed. She slides in, shutting the door behind her.

“What are you doing?” she asks. He jerks, surprised, but when he turns to face her his expression is totally calm, like he was expecting her to sneak into his room late at night.

“Hello,” he says. Then, infuriatingly, “Running away to join the circus, what does it look like?”

The sudden smile is unexpected and very insistent, and Lyra makes sure to show all her teeth. His answering smile is small and determined and he goes back to checking his bag, fingers dancing over the straps.

“You’re going after the knife,” she says.

“It would solve a lot if we had it, yes,” Will shrugs.

“You weren’t going to take me.”

“I can probably do it on my own,” he says, perfectly calm. “But since you’re here, backup would be nice.”

Lyra’s smile feels intent on taking over her face. So _this_ must be what the alethiometer meant. She would be irritated at herself for being wrong about him, for doubting it, but the knowledge that Will is defying his parents to look for the knife to get her alethiometer back, well…it’s too good a thing to be angry over. “How do we get out?”

Will lifts the rope from his bed, smile widening. “How do you feel about abseiling?”

Abseiling is, in Lyra’s opinion, fantastic and she wishes she’d known about it before. She tells Will as much as they walk briskly down the street, heads ducked down against the sticky night air and sticky streetlamp light. They’d left pillows in the vague shape of a human body under his covers too.

“It won’t fool my parents long,” Will said. “But might buy us a little bit of time. What? Why is Pan looking at me like that?”

“Because I was _right,_ Lyra,” Pan says, in a very smug way.

“Yes, you were right,” Lyra rolls her eyes.

“I’m always right.”

“That’s taking it a bit too far.”

“Right about what?” Will asks as they make it out onto the main road and strike out in the direction of the window.

“Lyra thought you were boring,” Pan says, like the grasser he is and Lyra interrupts before Will can get offended, “not boring. Nice. But ultimately useless.”

“That’s not what you said.”

“ _Pantalaimon._ ”

“Why?” Will asks. He sounds surprised rather than angry. Lyra wasn’t expecting that either. People tend to get angry when you insult them.

“You do as you’re told,” Lyra says. “Only boring people do that.”

“Yeah well,” Will shrugs. “When you have adults as reasonable as mine, there’s no point in sneaking around behind their backs. They let me do most things.”

“So you could just climb a college and they wouldn’t yell at you?”

“Mary got me and the parents an urban exploration experience for Christmas the other year.”

“Urban _what_?”

“Climbing buildings and sewers and stuff. It was really cool.”

“I mean just on your own.”

“Yeah, you’re not allowed to do that here,” Will says as they cross the deserted road, Lyra counting the trees until they’re facing the window, just catching the shimmer of it in the darkness. “Not all of us are you, Lyra.”

Lyra shrugs, pleased at being singled out. Pan shifts into a bird and flutters through the window and she follows him. She hears Will’s intake of awed breath, turns to see his eyes flitting about, staring at the grand silhouetted buildings, the night-faded colours, the stars that are so much brighter here than they are in his world. Lyra looks up at him in the dark and then nudges his elbow.

“Come on. I don’t think the Spectres will get you, but we shouldn’t take too long even so.”

“Sorry,” he says, still distracted. Then, “it’s _pretty._ It’s like a poem or something. I haven’t seen anything like it.”

“You can’t see anything _of_ it,” Lyra points out as they climb the tree-lined streets of the city towards the tower, bridges and stairs and rows of palatial, pale houses in the bright moonlight. Then, relenting, “you should see it in sunshine. All this space and no adults _anywhere._ It’s amazing. We could come back one day, go climbing and swimming and things.”

“That sounds like fun,” Will says, and Lyra grins at him. Roger would think it was fun too. Roger would have _loved_ a place like this.

A few minutes later, the street opens up into the square several streets below the tower. There is a girl in the middle of it, on her knees, spasming and whimpering and hitting at air. Lyra freezes and Will crashes into the back of her.

“What the…oh,” Will says.

“Can you see anything?” Pan asks before Lyra can. She’s seen a few Spectre attacks by now. She wishes she could walk on by but they’re not something you can, often. If you’re a kid, if you’re safe, it feels like something you have to bear witness to. She can see a few of the other kids hanging around in the shadows at the edge of the square.

“A girl having an epileptic fit,” Will responds, and then, in a horrified voice, “she’s being attacked by Spectres, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Lyra says, shortly. She doesn’t like to think about it too closely, not when she’s still safe.

“God,” he mutters, shivers, steps a little closer.

“Glad you can’t see them,” Pan says. “Means they won’t get you.”

Eventually, the girl stills on her knees and stays there, staring absently at the cobble stones. The other kids dribble across the square to them – as they get closer, Lyra makes out Angelica and Paola, and a few others she didn’t bother to put names to. Paola is clinging to Angelica’s arm, her pale hair ghostly in the dark and her eyes far too big for her thin face.

“Thought it was you, Lyra,” Angelica says. “Where’ve you been? Who’s this?”

“My friend, Will,” Lyra replies, shifts just a little bit in front of Will. She’s used to kids like this, used to the way the hierarchy works – it’s no different to the kids she’d play with in Oxford all those lifetimes ago. She’d run around with this lot for a while when she’d first come through, exhausted and hurting, let them show her where the best swimming spots and best food could be found whilst she found the energy to use the alethiometer again, to figure out where she was supposed to be going. Before the spy-fly had found her. They aren’t particularly nice, but perhaps they’d recognised a kindred spirit in her, another person who’d lost everything. They hadn’t bothered her after she’d proven herself.

“Will,” Angelica repeats, adjusting her stance.

“This is Angelica, and her little sister Paola,” Lyra says, briskly. “Who was that?”

“Chiara,” Angelica shakes her head. “We told her to run months ago and she didn’t listen, said she’d be ok. Stupid, really. I’m surprised she lasted as long as this.”

“Really stupid,” Lyra agrees.

“How old’s he? He’s getting close to the danger zone.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not going to stick around for much longer.”

“Where else is there to go?” Angelica frowns.

“Lots of places,” Lyra says vaguely. “Maybe we’ll sail away. Can’t be Spectres everywhere, right?”

Beside them, Will is looking up at the tower, the light glowing in the topmost window. Lyra follows his gaze, squints at the vague shape she can see moving around inside.

“Who’s that?” she asks, before Angelica can press her more on where’s she been, on her future plans.

“What?”

“The light, in the tower. You never said someone lived up there.”

“It’s haunted,” Angelica says, too quickly. “Didn’t we tell you that?”

“No,” Lyra says.

“The whole city’s haunted,” Paola pipes up. “We can show you-”

“Another time,” Angelica interrupts. “We’ve got to go. Giovanni found a peach orchard in one of the palaces and everything’s ripe. We were going to sleep there. Coming?”

“No, I’m going to show Will around first,” Lyra says.

Angelica meets her eyes, hard, her chin raised with the hostility of one leader meeting another and never being quite sure where they stand, “Suit yourself.”

They disappear down a side street and Lyra waits for a few heartbeats before leading Will across the square, past the silent, vacant body of Chiara and up another flight of stairs.

“They’re just here on their own?” Will asks after a while.

“Yeah. Parents got eaten or ran away,” Lyra says.

“Shit, that’s awful.”

Lyra shrugs again. Pan has turned into a cat, is bounding ahead of them, up and up and up. “It is. But lots of things are awful. Come on, be careful.”

They make it to the tower. Lyra hasn’t really been that close to it – the kids avoid it as a matter of course – and they hunt around the base of it but there is no doorway. She checks for hidden ones, like there are in Jordan College, but still nothing – just four implacable bronze angels and the tower stretching into the sky like a silent reprimand. The light flickers on and off, still, and Lyra wonders who on earth could be up there. Maybe it was an adult. Maybe they were caught by a Spectre before they could turn it out. She has no idea, feels a little bit frightened.

Will sits down next to her heavily on the steps. “This is going well,” he says, as though he’s trying to make light of it. “We could have a go at climbing it, but I’d have to get my rope up somehow.” Then to Pan, “would you be able to carry it up?”

“It’s too big a distance,” Pan says. “I can’t go that far from Lyra.”

“But Sayan…”

“I don’t know why your dad and Sayan can separate,” Lyra says moodily, staring at her hands. “The only people I’ve seen that can do that are witches. It’s not normal.”

“Oh. Ok,” Will says. “Well, do you have any other ideas? I guess we could…” he trails off. When Lyra glances over, he’s studying the grating intently. The grating. Pan responds to the thought, turning into a moth and darting down to look at it.

“There’s a room under there,” he says, suddenly excited. Lyra’s heart kicks up. “Lyra – remember that door we found? The one with the angel that Angelica was being all weird about…”

“Something about leaving food for her brother and – _yes,_ Pan, you’re _brilliant_!”

Will is looking at them, blinking, and Lyra nudges her shoulder with his. “Come on. I know the way in.”

*

Inside, the tower is all gloom and shadow and echoes dripping from the ceiling. They look at each other and begin the climb up in silence, looking for something, anything. Lyra has no idea where a magic knife would be kept, knows she’s willing to rip the place apart to find it, but the room with the light on is maybe the best place to start. Perhaps they’ll find someone willing to help them. Or perhaps Dr Parry will turn out to be right and they’ll find an obstacle. Lyra doesn’t know.

The stone stairs turn into narrow wooden ones, up to a small door with light spilling from the cracks. They push it open and climb through into a warm, lit room. Lyra knows that they must be somewhere at the top of the tower but she’s instantly distracted by the man tied up and gagged in the corner. Her feet are moving before she knows it. She and Will and Pan reach him at the same time, and she tugs down his gag and Will begins to untie his feet.

“Who are you?” she demands.

The man gulps in air. He’s old, tanned, white-haired, dressed like one of the scholars at Jordan, all smart and gloved. “Giacomo Paradisi,” he gasps in the same lilting accent as Angelica and her gang. “The Bearer. There’s a boy hiding here, he stole the knife from me, he…”

They hear the scrape of footsteps and as one, she and Will turn to face the entry-way. There’s a boy silhouetted there, sallow and thin and rangy. In the shadows he has the same jawline as Angelica and in his left hand glints a small, wickedly sharp knife.

“The knife,” Will whispers.

The boy steps properly into the light. His eyes are wide, roving all about the place. He’s older than them by a year or two or three. “Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want?”

Pan is still a red panda. He hasn’t changed form into something bigger. It doesn’t matter. Lyra doesn’t think anything could scare this boy, not with the crazed sheen to his eyes, the sweat on his forehead. He looks desperate.

“Look, we need that knife,” Lyra says, as calmly and clearly as possibly. Her heart is going so fast she thinks she might throw up.

“Careful,” Pan hisses, shrinking towards her. Will is carefully backing away. She sees him wrap the rope from Giacomo’s feet around his hand out of the corner of her eye.

“It’s ok,” Will is saying. “Just calm down. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“It’s _mine,_ ” the boy hisses. “Get _out._ ”

He sweeps his arm in threat, and the knife slices through a carving on the table, two pieces of metal falling clean away and clanging onto the floor. Pan flees behind Lyra’s legs. She clenches her fists, ready to fight, but the boy doesn’t even look at her, goes straight for Will. It happens so fast. Will obviously knows what he’s doing but the boy is vicious and armed and Will isn’t hitting back, is on the back foot and Lyra is lunging forward, grabbing the boy’s arm and tugging it downwards, biting him hard. He howls and flings her off – she trips over, lands on her elbow. Pain lances up her arm and she shuffles backwards out of the way. It’s enough to throw the boy’s balance off, to give Will the upper hand. They’re locked in now, wrestling for it, and the boy can’t get a good hit in and suddenly the knife is sailing out of his hand, embedding into the stone floor like it is made of butter. They both lunge for it, momentum, sailing and Lyra is scrabbling over to Giacomo, untying the knot on his hands. There is the crash of glass.

“ _Will_!” she shrieks, and then Giacomo is free. The boy has Will pinned over the dark city, head in mid-air, hands around Will’s throat. Giacomo grabs him and hauls him off – Will teeters, but Lyra has seized hold of his ankle, leans out and takes his hand, pulls him in.

“I’ve got it,” she hears Pan warble from inside, and then all the air rushes out of her and she collapses, feeling like her ribs have been staved in and her heart crushed beneath someone’s boot. Pan struggles over to her. Will and the boy are fighting again, and she peels herself up. Will is punching the boy, once, twice, three times, and then the boy is running, tumbling through the doorway and down the stairs.

The sounds of panicked flight die away. There is silence. Will sinks to his knees, staring at his hand. Lyra is by his side in an instant. Her chest and wrist are throbbing. The rope around Will’s hand is bloodied.

She unwraps it as carefully as she can and two brown fingers fall out of it, hitting the floor with a soft noise.

All Lyra can hear is her own breathing, harsh in her ears.

Will looks dazedly at the stumps on his left hand and slumps silently to the flagstones.

“Well,” Giacomo Paradisi says, surveying the scene. “It looks like Æsahættr has chosen a new bearer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cherwell is a real school in North Oxford, and if you spotted the Hamilton reference you get cookies!


	4. in the morning light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the kudos and support - I'm really glad you guys are enjoying this! :D

It is dawning by the time they leave the tower. Will’s head is spinning – from pain or from the enormity of what’s just happened, he doesn’t know. The subtle knife – Æsahættr – is in its sheath on his belt and Lyra has his bag and his good elbow, Pan on his other side, nearly close enough to touch. It takes all his concentration to put one foot in front of the other, to get down the stairs in one piece; outside, the weak sunlight makes his eyes sting. His fingers are throbbing. He doesn’t think he’s been in this much pain in his whole life.

“What?” he hears Lyra say belligerently, dimly, and forces himself to look up. The street is filled with kids. He blinks. There are only six of them, but Angelica has a big stone in her hand. Her face is stained with tears.

“ _Murderer,_ ” Angelica yells. “You murderer!”

“What?” Lyra’s confused now.

“You killed Tullio! He’s dead because of you!” Angelica’s voice breaks on a sob. He thinks he hears the little one – Paola – wail. Tullio. That must have been the boy he’d fought. He’d been older. Lyra had said something about Angelica and a brother…oh. _Oh._

“We didn’t do anything!” Lyra is saying, heatedly.

“You did! He was safe in there! He was _safe_ from them and now they’ve got him and it’s all your fault!”

“Look, I’m sorry but-” Lyra begins, but then one of Angelica’s cronies hurls a stone that impacts on the stone about a foot from Will’s head. Lyra is one tense, quivering line next to him. Her hand has found his good one.

“Can you run?” Pan is whispering in his ear.

“Don’t have a choice,” Will gets out. “Do we?”

Pan’s response is to plummet to earth, turning into an enormous tiger. He roars and the kids scream; in that instant, Will and Lyra are running, Pan hard on their heels. The world recedes in and out of Will’s vision. The only thing he’s aware of is Lyra’s sweaty hand in his, his breathing echoing inside his head, the world tilting and slipping with each stride. He can’t do this. He _has_ to do it.

“Come on, Will, come _on,_ ” Lyra is half-sobbing as they run. The kids, recovered from the shock Pan gave them, are hard on their heels. A stone sails past, and then another. Lyra yelps and swears loudly as they turn the corner and stumble down the stairs in the direction of the window. Another stone, and another.

“We’re going to kill you,” he hears Angelica scream. “Just like you killed Tullio!”

Lyra skids to a stop and Will nearly topples over. His vision is rimmed in grey and his breath burns. The window is glimmering in front of them. He can hear the rush-hour cars and Lyra helps him through, Pan fluttering through after them.

“Close it,” she says. “Can you close it? Come on, Will, you can do this. You can _do_ this.”

Will takes a deep breath of polluted air and uses the last of his energy to accept the pain, to put his mind in his fingertips to reach out for the window and slide it closed. The last thing he hears is Angelica’s scream of rage, echoing between the worlds.

*

“Mary, wake up. _Mary._ ”

It’s Elaine’s voice. Mary groans, rolls out of a dream about dancing fruit pastilles with knives that speak in the voice of angels, squints at her clock. It is also eight in the morning, far too early for a Sunday, but Elaine’s voice is brimming with panic and that wakes Mary up faster than a bucket of ice water to the face. She sits up, rubs her eyes.

“What? Hi, good morning. Are you ok?”

“Mary, they’re gone,” Elaine says and Mary freezes, stares at her. The crack of the light from the curtain illuminates half of Elaine’s terrified expression.

“What?”

“Will and Lyra,” Elaine says.

“They’ve gone after the knife,” Mary says, a hundred percent awake, swinging her legs out of bed and following Elaine out of her bedroom, through the dark office and into the kitchen. John is sitting at the table with his head in his hands.

“He left a note.” Elaine picks it up off the table and Mary takes it in bloodless fingers, reads Will’s scratchy writing.

_Gone to Cittagazze. Should be back before you find this. Have emergency contact details and supplies. Love you all._

The world swings around her for a second before she finds her centre of gravity again, sucks in a deep breath. John emerges from his hands.

“It’s my fault,” he says, dully. “If I hadn’t taught him all these things he wouldn’t have even thought to…”

“Don’t,” Mary says firmly. “No, John. He might still have gone. It’s _better_ that he knows how to do it properly. Can we call the police, see if anyone has spotted them?”

“Oh yes, hello officer, have you seen our son and his friend who have disappeared to another world? We were wondering if you’d seen them climb through a window in the air,” Elaine snaps. Then, “fuck, sorry, Mary.”

“It’s ok,” Mary says.

“Jesus…what if something’s happened to him? He expected to be back before we noticed.”

“I know. Me too.”

John is now staring at the wood of the kitchen table, looking like he’s gone someplace else entirely in his head. It’s not the eerie emptiness that’s left when he’s scrying, but it comes close. The only clue that he’s still in there is Sayan, swooping restlessly and silently from one corner of the room to the other. Elaine is pacing back and forth too, and Mary tucks herself into the corner of the kitchen. She doesn’t know what they can do apart from wait. She has three degrees, and she can’t think of a single thing to do or say. She’s never felt more powerless in her life.

The phone rings and Elaine lunges for it. “Hello?”

Her brown skin takes on a grey, ashen cast and Mary can see her knuckles standing upright through the skin of her hand. “Yes, I’m his mother.”

John has risen from his seat. Mary’s stomach feels all tight and sick and suddenly Elaine exhales, sharply. “Ok. Ok. We’ll be there as soon as possible. Thank you. Thanks. Bye.” She turns to them, and she’s crying. “They’re at the JR. They’re ok.”

“Jesus Christ,” John says, crossing the room to her and pulling her into his arms. After a second, he opens an arm to Mary too who joins the hug. She can feel both of them shaking. “Let’s go.”

They quickly throw on clothes and then Mary drives them through the rush-hour traffic along the ring-road to the hospital. She drops them outside the main door and then finding a place to park. Inside, she queues for the reception.

“Hi, I’m here for William Parry? Mary Malone,” she says. The receptionist looks up, narrows her eyes.

“His parents came through ten minutes ago,” she says. “And I’m afraid it’s family only for the trauma ward.”

“I am family,” Mary says. “And I need to pick up the girl with him. Lyra Belacqua.”

“Give me a second,” the receptionist says and picks up the phone, shields her mouth, says a few brisk things into it. “Ok, she’s been discharged. Someone’s going to bring her down for you. Can I see some ID?”

Mary digs out her driving license.

“I’m her godmother,” she lies, picking the one thing that doesn’t have any records. God knows Lyra doesn’t have a medical record. She has no idea what tales Lyra has spun around that one, hopes that it holds up.

“Yes, it says that on her notes,” the receptionist says, and Mary has a rare moment of thanking God for Lyra’s quick brain. “If you’d like to take a seat, madam, and she’ll be here shortly.”

Mary does as she’s told, fires off a quick text to Elaine, gets back, _Will’s ok but they’re finishing up some tests. We’ll get a taxi home later._

 _Ok,_ Mary replies, and when she looks up, Lyra is sprinting across the reception, weaving around everyone and colliding with Mary. Mary wraps her up in the tightest hug she can manage. Lyra has a big bag of Will’s on her back, and she’s crying into Mary’s jumper. Mary can just about make out the words, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” she says. “Hey, it’s ok. It’s ok. You gave us quite a fright but you’re ok. That’s all that matters.”

Lyra emerges, swipes furiously at her eyes. Her right wrist is bound up in a splint, and Mary can see a big dressing poking out of the neck of the t-shirt she’s wearing. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” Mary says firmly. “I imagine you both might get a telling off from Elaine for scaring us like that, but that’s for later. All we care about is that you’re safe, ok?”

“Ok,” Lyra whispers.

“Shall we go home?” Mary asks, and Lyra nods.

They’re mostly quiet in the car, and when they get home Mary makes Lyra eat something, doesn’t ask her any questions. It’s not the time for it, not when Lyra is looking so wan and exhausted. They settle down on the sofa, pull up the blinds, and Mary picks out the DVD of Mulan, the one Disney film in the household, to put on.

“You can have a nap if you want,” Mary says, pressing play and tucking the blanket firmly over them. Lyra is pressed against her side and a silent Pan has turned into an ermine and curled into a little ball on Lyra’s lap. “I imagine you’re tired after being out all night.”

“Yeah,” Lyra says, but leaves it at that. She doesn’t sleep, Mary notices, just watches the movie in listless silence, plays with her mug of hot chocolate and keeps glancing at the window, down the street.

“Have you had any news?” she asks abruptly, several hours later.

Mary reaches for her phone, clicks it on. There’s a new message from Elaine, time-stamped about ten minutes ago. “Yep. They’re on their way home.”

Lyra just sighs and tips forward so that her forehead is pressed against her knees.

“It’s ok,” Mary says.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’m thirty years older than you?”

Lyra makes a derisive noise, and Mary remembers that age doesn’t count for much in Lyra’s head.

“Because I have a doctorate?” she tries. “Because I’m queen of the multiverse and I’m ordering it to be ok?”

That last gets a watery laugh out of Lyra and she re-emerges. They sit in quiet until they both hear the sound of an engine moving up the street. Lyra darts to the window, peers out, and then turns and makes for the door. Mary follows her, wondering at this change; Lyra has been ambivalent about Will until now, and Will vaguely curious about her. She doesn’t know what’s changed between them, why Will abandoned all his common sense to follow her. Lyra has the door open before the others have even made it halfway up the drive, Will walking slowly and carefully between his parents.

“Will,” Lyra is calling. “Will!”

Mary grabs her good elbow. “Let them get inside, Lyra.”

Lyra pulls a face but lets Mary pull her back into the hallway, give them space to come in. Both Elaine and John look like they’ve been crying, and Will looks awful – all grey pallor and wobbly steps and big bandages wrapped around his left hand.

“Hi, Lyra,” he says, finding a weak smile for Lyra. “Hi Mary.”

“Good to see you in one piece,” Mary says. “What’s happening?”

“Will is going to rest,” John says. “And then we’re going to have a talk.”

“I’m sorry,” Lyra says immediately. “I’m really sorry and-”

“We’re not angry with you, Lyra.” Elaine says. “Will has informed us at length that it was his idea and that he takes full responsibility.”

“It _was,_ ” Will insists. “And you can ground me as long as you want.”

“I think your injury is probably punishment enough,” John says. “But we’ll hold it under consideration until you’re better. Come on. Let’s get you into bed.”

“Do you want anything to eat?” Mary asks and Will pulls a face.

“Not yet. I just want to sleep.”

“Anaesthesia,” Elaine says. “Could you put the kettle on for us, Mary?”

Fifteen minutes later, they’re all settled in the kitchen, picking at breakfast and listening to Lyra’s side of the story. Climbing out of Will’s window. The girl being eaten by Spectres. Finding the door, the fight with Tullio. Will’s injury.

“The subtle knife,” Mary says. “That’s what he called it?”

“No, there was that…” Pan starts, and Lyra finishes the sentence, as though something forgotten is dawning on her, “he called it Æsahættr too. Just once. Like the weapon you heard about, Dr Parry. It’s definitely scary enough to be that.”

John exhales slowly. “And Will’s the bearer?”

“Yeah. There’s only one at a time.” Lyra prods at her sandwich. “The old one was missing fingers too.”

They all exchange a look over her head that Lyra misses, being absorbed in peeling strips off her bacon. Mary can see the agreement in their eyes that there is no way Sir Charles is getting his hands on the knife, not when it’s the Æsahættr, not when Lord Asriel needs it, not when it belongs to Will.

“We’re going to discuss this when Will is feeling better,” Sayan says eventually, re-arranging her wings.

For once, Lyra doesn’t argue. She picks up the sandwich, mumbles a thanks, and disappears into the garden. Mary watches her vault the wall and scramble up the tree at the back, disappearing into the foliage. The kid hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, but Mary doesn’t blame her. It’s a whole lot to take in and even though Lyra’s been dealing with this longer than they have, it’s a lot.

“I’m going to phone Cherwell,” she says eventually, breaking the silence. “They need to know he won’t be coming into school for a few days.”

“Phone Lakiwe, too,” Elaine replies. “I’d prefer Will’s friends to find out from Thabisa rather than their form tutor.”

“Gotcha,” Mary says, taking her mug to the dishwasher and grabbing the landline, heading outside and to the swing-seat. She tips her face up to the sun and tries to breathe, to ignore her shaking hands. Two days ago, their lives were relatively normal. Studying the weird ins and outs of dark matter has prepared Mary relatively well for the unexpected, but this is on a whole different level. She doesn’t know what to think, knows that these things have been in motion longer than she can comprehend, and that she’s just got to go with it. Sometimes, questioning and making sense of something this huge is only the path to madness.

After a while, she calls school and Thabisa’s mother, and then fetches the read-outs from the I Ching experiments she finished yesterday. If Lyra’s up to it, they might be able to go and play on the Cave later, see if Lyra’s knowledge adds anything to Mary’s. If she focuses on the theory and the funding application, she doesn’t have to think about everything that’s happening. If she focuses on physics, reality ceases to matter and right now, she would really rather like reality to give them all a bloody break.

*

Eventually, Lyra forces herself down from the tree. She just hadn’t wanted to be in that kitchen a second longer, reminding herself of everything she’s never had. She couldn’t stop thinking that if it were her in that hospital bed with a cut-up hand, her parents wouldn’t have been worried and tearful at her bedside. Her parents wouldn’t be together, helping her through the door. She’s had people in charge of her welfare, sure, but not a parent, not that kind of unconditional love she’s always scoffed at people for wanting.

“Lee loves us,” Pan had whispered, standing up on his hind legs in her lap so he could look her in the face. “And Iorek.”

“But they’re not _here_ are they?” Lyra had replied, voice cracking and crumbling. She’d shaken her head. “I just…I don’t know, Pan. I never wanted parents before. We didn’t need them.”

“Maybe we did,” Pan had licked her chin in an attempt at comfort. “Maybe we’re only just realising we did. We wanted Mrs Coulter to be our mother before we realised she was evil.”

“That was a bad decision.”

“Yes.”

“Mary and the Parrys might let us stay if we asked them nicely.”

“But they’ve got Will. They don’t need us too.” Lyra sighs, breathes in all the hurt and feels herself crack just a little bit more. “I don’t want to keep losing people, Pan.”

“I know,” Pan says. “Me neither.”

They stay up there for a few hours, listening to the birds. Lyra drifts off for a while, and when she wakes she feels a little bit steadier. They sit a little bit longer and then eventually Lyra’s stomach starts hurting so she shimmies back down to solid ground, heads through the mid-afternoon sunshine and back into the house, picks up her abandoned book and an apple but she hears voices and hangs around, curious, three women talking. After a second, she hears the front door close and Elaine is coming back into the kitchen, a box under her arm.

“Ah,” she says. “There you are. How’s your arm doing? Do you need any more painkillers?”

Lyra stretches it, winces, nods, and follows Elaine into the kitchen, accepts the tablets quietly. Elaine has put a wrapped box on the side and Lyra glances at it.

“Will’s friend Thabisa just brought that round,” she says. “I was just going to take it up to him.”

“Can I?” Lyra asks.

Elaine smiles. “Of course. We’re just all in the office if you need us, ok?”

“Ok,” Lyra says.

Upstairs, she finds that Will is awake and half-propped up against his pillows. He looks a little less dead, and his cheeks darken as she knocks, enters, and puts the box in his lap.

“Your friend brought you this,” she says, wondering if she should leave.

Will picks up the envelope taped to the top, opens it, and his faces creases up in tired, silent laughter. He proffers it to her, and Lyra takes this as an invitation to stay, sits down and crosses her legs. Pan bounces down onto the pillows. He likes to sit close to Will for reasons he’s not seen fit to share with Lyra.

 _Dear Will,_ she reads, _heard you lost some fingers. We’ll look in lost property for them tomorrow. Get well soon. Love Thab. P.S. Maya agreed to be my girlfriend!_

She doesn’t get the joke but Will looks happy so she assumes it was good, puts it aside. Best friends always have a language unto themselves and she misses Roger and theirs, their secret history, the things that made them laugh but confused everyone else.

“Can you help me open it?” Will asks after a second, sheepish. “I didn’t realise how useful having two hands was until I lost use of one.”

“Very careless of you,” Lyra agrees and pulls the box towards her. Pan’s sharp teeth make quick work of the tape and she opens it up, turns it back around for him. He looks through the contents, grinning, and then carefully shuts it and shunts it off to one side. They sit in quiet for a second and then Will leans even further back against his pillows.

“Well that was an adventure, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Lyra says warily.

“Why are you sounding so glum?”

“Why are you sounding so happy?”

“I mean,” Will shrugs. “We got the knife. Also I think these painkillers are making me loopy.”

“You’re already loopy.”

“I thought you said I was boring.”

“Until you fought a crazy man for a knife, yes.” Then, “why did you do that?”

“Because he fought me first,” Will says. And then he meets her eyes, suddenly understanding. “You mean why did I plan to go in the first place?”

Lyra nods.

“You didn’t ask me before,” he says.

“Well I’m asking now,” she replies.

“I mean, you need your alethiometer back, right? It’s going to tell you what to do next. And you seem like the kind of person who needs a goal. You’re not supposed to be shut up here waiting for things to happen.” He shifts, scratches his ear, “and this whole war thing as well.”

“I guess.”

They fall into quiet for a few beats and then Will sighs. “Also…”

“Also what?”

“It’s going to sound stupid.”

“No it’s not. Tell me.”

“It’s…” Will pauses. “Dad’s had all these adventures, right? And I know he wouldn’t call them adventures – he was in the Marines – elite Navy soldiers – and then he and Mum went exploring all over the world together before I was born, and then he…I mean, this bit wasn’t great, but he accidentally ended up in your world and I’m just…it’s a lot of a legacy to live up to? He’s done all this cool stuff and I’m in school learning about Shakespeare. Which is fine. But since they were being so slow about making a decision and you were really upset, I thought that…I might be able to do it. So. Yeah. That.”

“It’s not stupid,” Lyra says. There’s a warm feeling she can’t name, like someone has just tucked a soft blanket around her shoulders, like her ribs are suddenly far too small for everything they’re trying to contain. “Why would you think that’s stupid?”

“Because I’m fourteen?”

“And? Just because we’re technically kids doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have adventures.” Lyra fiddles with the edge of her t-shirt for a second. “So my father…well, I thought he was my uncle at the time, but he was a scientist, an explorer. I wanted to be just like him. I was desperate to go to the North with him and he would never let me.”

“But you went.”

“But I went.”

Lyra doesn’t know what she’s about to say – about her mother, about Roger, something, anything – Will is listening to her like no-one’s ever listened to her before, quiet and waiting, not filling the silence with words and thoughts of his own. It’s strange. Mrs Coulter only listened when Lyra was being sweet and charming, Lord Asriel only listened when Lyra had something useful to say, and even the gyptians, wonderful as they were, had other things to care about. Lee listened, and Iorek, but not like this. Never like this. It’s a powerful, scary thing to sit here with Will’s eyes on her face and the feeling that the things she says are important to him for no other reason than that she’s the one saying them. She doesn’t want to lie to him, she realises, not ever.

Before she says whatever it is, however, there’s a knock on the door and she fists her hands into her lap, irritated by the interruption.

“Come in,” Will calls, making an apologetic face in Lyra’s direction. Dr Parry edges the door open. He’s carrying a tray, sets it down on the bedside table.

“There you are, Lyra,” he says. “Mary’s looking for you. She was wondering if you wanted to go play on the Cave.”

“The machine you built to look at Dust?”

“Yes.”

“Uh,” Lyra glances between Will and Dr Parry for a second, unsure. She’s wanted to have a look at this Dust machine ever since they told her about it, but right now she doesn’t want to leave Will. “Is that ok?”

“Of course,” Dr Parry says, eyes crinkling around the corners. “I’d like to hear what you think of it. And anyway, Will and I need to have a conversation about his bowline knots.”

“Dad,” Will groans.

“Don’t ‘Dad’ me, young man. I taught you better knotwork than the travesty I found dangling from your bedroom window this morning.”

Will pulls a pleading face at Lyra over Dr Parry’s shoulder and Lyra swallows her snort of laughter, decides that computers and Dust and finding out what’s going on are much better than sitting and watching Will be told off for doing knots wrong.

“Have fun,” she says, and slips out of the door, leaving Will to his fate.

*

Will shudders awake from a nightmare to a jet-dark room and the steady throb of blood trickling from the remains of his fingers. The alarm clock says 1am, and he lies and stares at shadowy ceiling for a second before reaching out to switch the lamp on, blinking the warm amber light out of his eyes. Dad had changed the dressing before he’d gone to bed. It was bleeding then, too. In fact it’s not stopped bleeding, even with all the drugs they gave him in hospital to try and make it clot. He wonders, light-headed, how much blood there _is_ in his body. How the others survived this he doesn’t know. Perhaps he’s going to be the shortest lived bearer in the history of the subtle knife. Perhaps he’s going to die.

He doesn’t want to die.

He thinks about phoning one of his parents, getting them to come and sit with him like they did when he was little and scared of the dark, but before he makes a decision the bathroom light clicks off. He hears footsteps creaking on the landing, too light to be Dad’s.

“Hello?” he calls, softly. “Mum, is that you?”

There is quiet for a second, and then Lyra’s voice says, “No, it’s me,” and she’s pushing the door to his bedroom open, stepping inside. Pan is an ermine, draped across her shoulders, and she’s wearing star-patterned pyjamas. Not for the first time, he has the uncomfortable realisation that he thinks Lyra Silvertongue is pretty. Not in the way the popular girls at school are – on trend and sleek and identical. Her face is windburned and her hair is usually a complete mess and she doesn’t care for matching clothes, but Will can’t shake the knowledge of it – that her smiles are like the view from the top of a mountain, and he thinks her determined scowl is like the sea, relentless. Sometimes she reminds him of a warrior from an ancient epic tale, and Will wonders when he started thinking like his mum.

“You alright?” Lyra asks, awkward, shifting from one foot to another.

Will shrugs and then winces. “Can’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” Lyra says, and seems to take their shared insomnia as all the invitation she needs to plop down on the end of his bed and pull the top blanket over her knees. Pan crawls off her shoulders and settles down with a sleepy sigh in the gap between their feet. He’s very close to Will, and Will makes sure not to move an inch, not to touch him. Sayan doesn’t mind touching him or Mum or Mary, really, but she’s said that it’s really not the done thing unless you’ve been given permission. He doesn’t know whether Pan’s newfound insistence on being centimetres away from Will whenever they’re in the same room is permission or not and doesn’t want to risk it.

“How was the science?” Will asks after a second.

Lyra’s frown melts away. “It was great,” she says. “Me and Mary hooked ourselves up to it. It did a thing with alethiometer symbols.”

“You can read it like the alethiometer?”

“Technically,” Lyra huffs. “But it refused to say anything other than that I had to get the alethiometer back. It didn’t answer any of our questions. I think it was angry with me. Mary’s going to work on it.”

“Do you think it’s sentient?” Will asks.

Lyra shrugs. “Perhaps. I don’t know. How’s your hand?”

“Still bleeding,” Will says, aiming for stoic detachment but his voice wobbles a bit at the end and ruins the effect. Then, because it’s 1am and he’s exhausted and it just slips out, “Do you think I’m going to die?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I’m serious, Lyra. I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“You’re going to be fine.”

“You can’t stubborn your way out of blood-loss.”

“Watch me,” Lyra says. “I know you’re not going to die because you can’t. I won’t let you.”

“You won’t let me?”

“No,” she says, and when she looks up, Will thinks he can see tears glinting in her eyes. “I’m not losing anyone else. Not after Roger.”

“Roger?” Will asks, trying to remember what she’d said at that first dinner about someone called Roger.

“My best friend,” she says. “I don’t remember a time when we weren’t friends. He worked in the kitchens at Jordan College and we used to play together all the time. He died, though. My father killed him. He cut Roger and his dæmon apart and used the energy to make the bridge into the other world. I watched him do it.”

“Lyra,” Will says, aghast. He can’t imagine losing any of his friends like that. He can’t imagine his dad even _thinking_ of such a thing. “I’m so sorry.”

She blinks and a tear rolls down her cheek. “Me too. I miss him all the time.”

“He got caught by the Gobblers,” Pan says, “you know, like we told you the first night. We went North to go and look for him, first of all.”

“It’s my fault,” Lyra finishes. “I’m the one who brought Roger to my father. If I hadn’t then he’d still be alive. I thought I was keeping him safe but I betrayed him.”

Will reaches out to take her hand with his good one and she shuffles closer, lies down on top of the covers next to him, clutching his fingers tightly.

“It’s not your fault,” he says, fiercely. “It is not your fault _at all._ It’s your father’s fault and no-one else’s, ok, Lyra?”

“Ok,” she says in a very small voice.

They lie in quiet for a while, listening to each other breathe. Will casts around for something to cheer her up, tries to remember what his mum has said about grief, about talking, about the power of stories. “What was he like?”

Lyra sniffles. “He was so sweet. He’d always come on adventures with me. This one time we found a rook with a broken wing on the roof and I wanted to cook it, but Roger made me promise to look after it until it could fly again. We hid it in my room for three weeks.” She laughs, watery, “No-one’s ever asked me about Roger before.”

She keeps talking and Will lets her, hears the story of the stolen barge and the endless wars in great detail and all the things they found out about Oxford together, explorers of their own little kingdom. When she’s run dry of stories, he says:

“I would have liked to meet him.”

“He would have liked you better than me sometimes.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is. I annoyed him a lot.” Then, “What are your friends like?”

“Mine? Well, there’s Thabisa. She’s the one I’m closest to. The others are nice, and we have fun together but I’m not best friends with anyone, really. Our lives are too different.”

“Same for me, in Oxford,” Lyra says. “Everyone else had to work, too, but I never did.”

“Not even school?”

“Sometimes the scholars would teach me but they’d have to catch me first.”

“You are so _feral._ ”

“Thanks,” Lyra says, actually pleased, and Will laughs. Only she would see feral as a compliment. “Is school really boring?”

“It has its moments. Sometimes it’s fun. But it’s the same issue – there’s so much _more_ out there.” He sighs. “And like…I’ve known about the other worlds practically my whole life. I know about Sayan. Dad’s been teaching me all these survival things, and Mum’s been teaching me poetry, and Mary’s tried with the physics and literally no-one in my year is that interested in anything like that, and I just…I can’t tell them about the other worlds and we don’t have much in common and everyone’s got their _person,_ you know? Even Thab’s got a girlfriend now, which is great, but she won’t be around as much. I don’t know. Sorry. I’m tired and after all this, I don’t really want to go back. Does that make sense?”

“Of course,” Lyra says, half around a yawn. She tucks her head a little bit closer to Will’s on the pillow. Her brown eyes are soft. “I don’t want to just go back to Jordan after this, either. Too much has changed.” And then, quieter, as unsure as Will’s ever heard her, “I’ll be your person if you want.”

“I’d like that,” Will says. They look at each other in the puddle of lamplight for a second. Lyra’s cheeks are dusted pink, and eventually she breaks eye-contact, yawns widely again. “We should go to sleep.”

“We should,” she says, and curls up closer. He’s not sure whether she should be in his room at all, what his parents will say if they catch them, but he knows he doesn’t want her to go. He won’t die of blood-loss if Lyra is here. And anyway, it’s a moot point because she’s already fast asleep, hands tucked under her chin. He leans over to turn the light off and settles down against his pillows, looks at her face in the dark, the shadow of her eyelashes and her jaw.

Vaguely he thinks to himself _this girl, I would follow her anywhere._

A little voice in the back of his head that sounds like a dæmon, but not one he’s ever heard before says crossly, _well you already have, idiot_.

*

“Morning, Mum,” Elaine hears and turns to see Will leaning unsteadily in the doorway, bandaged hand held up to his chest. He sounds sleepy and dozy but he’s on his feet and, thankfully, looking a lot less out of it. She crosses the room to give him a hug, worry subsiding just a little. He hugs her back carefully, rests his chin on her shoulder.

“Morning, baby,” she says. “How are you feeling?”

“Rough,” Will admits. “Hungry.”

“I’m not surprised.” Then, because she can’t help herself, “where’s Lyra? She wasn’t in her bed this morning.”

Will’s entire face turns a hilarious shade of dark red. Elaine can’t help but laugh as she helps him across the room to a chair, turns to flip the kettle on. “Um, she…I…”

She decides to put him out of his misery. “I saw the two of you curled up in bed together. You were very sweet. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

“You’re not…it’s…we were just sleeping. We couldn’t sleep and she came in and we talked and we fell asleep, that’s all-”.

“Will, I trust you,” Elaine says, putting a mug of tea down for him and fetching the cereal. “It’s ok. Just thought it was funny, though, she didn’t seem at all interested in talking to you before.”

“She said she thought I was boring,” Will says and laughs. Elaine rolls her eyes, fond.

“Well, she’s been proven wrong about that,” she says. “You’re the worst enabler I’ve ever met.”

“And I wonder who taught me that,” Will hits back and Elaine smiles, sits down opposite him.

“How’s your hand?”

His smile slips off his face. “Still bleeding.”

“Really? Ok, we’ll phone the doctor this morning, sweetheart.”

“Ok.”

The door opens and John comes in still in his workout clothes with Mary hot on his heels. “I told you we needed a better organisation system in that office, John,” she’s saying. “I knew it was in there somewhere.”

“Yes, I know, you win. We’ll have a clear-out when everything’s done.”

“What?” Elaine stares at her husband and their best friend, both of whom are wearing identical smiles.

“One problem potentially solved,” Mary says. There are deep purple bags under her eyes. “Well, a hypothesis to be tested. Data may prove over-optimism, but we’ll withhold judgement to avoid bias in the testing.”

“Mary had an idea at stupid o’clock this morning,” John translates, opening his hands to reveal a dented little tin, “and has been up ever since, hence the reason she is science babbling.”

“I need coffee,” Mary says.

“Yes, I can tell,” Elaine says as Mary brushes past her to the coffeepot.

“What’s that, Dad?” Will asks.

“Bloodmoss ointment,” John says, pulling the seat out next to Will and sitting down. “You know the armoured bear stories I used to tell you? They have this plant they use to heal wounds. I made a ointment out of it whilst I was there and totally forgot about it. It healed my leg when I got it caught in a bear trap.”

“You did _what_?” Will asks, and Elaine pulls a face, goes to find a clean towel from the linen cupboard in the utility. She hadn’t been very pleased when John had told her that story either, swallows down the kneejerk emotional reaction to hearing him talk about getting hurt.

“Will it even be ok to use after all this time?” she asks, returning as John screws open the lid, helps unwind Will’s bandages from around his hand. She flinches every time she sees the wound, wishes she could do something to take Will’s pain away – even with industrial strength painkillers, she knows it’s hurting him. She puts a hand on his shoulder as John carefully cleans the oozing stumps off and picks up the pot.

“The bears say this stuff lasts forever,” he says as he smears a little onto the wound. “And I definitely put preservatives in it.”

“It’s cold,” Will says, surprised. “Nice, actually.”

“Yes,” John says, absently. “I remember that. It’s a weird feeling, isn’t it?”

“It’s already clotting,” Elaine leans over as John wraps up Will’s bandages. “Wow.”

“Mary, you were right,” John says to Mary who is incoherently inhaling her coffee. “Morning, Lyra.”

“Sleep well?” Elaine asks as Lyra stops in the doorway, and watches Lyra’s eyes skid to Will. Both of them are blushing, but luckily neither John nor Mary appear to have noticed. John is now scribbling notes on a paper napkin and Mary, now sufficiently caffeinated, has padded over to lean over his shoulder and add corrections. Elaine leaves them to it, goes to put more toast in.

“Yes,” Lyra says eventually. “What’s happening?”

“Dad found an old ointment for my hand,” Will says. “Bloodmoss or something.”

“Oh, like Iorek Byrnison showed me,” Lyra says. “Has the bleeding stopped?”

“Hopefully,” Elaine says. “Sit down, Lyra, we all need to have a talk.”

When she turns away from the toaster, goes to get the cereal out from the cupboard, she sees that Lyra has taken the chair next to Will and shifted it a little too close to him on the excuse of looking at his hand. When they all start to eat, neither of them have moved. Elaine avoids looking at them, hides her smile. She thought Will was still in the _ew, romance_ stage of his teenage years where anything even remotely romantic sends him running embarrassed for the hills, but perhaps not anymore. He’s growing up, quicker than she’d expected.

“So,” she says after a while, interrupting a facile argument between Will and Mary about jam. “Since there’s absolutely no way we are giving Sir Charles that knife, what do we do now?”

“Well,” John says with a grin far too similar to Lyra’s, “what do you think about staging a heist?”

*

“You’re going to be ok?” John asks for the thousandth time. Will is jogging from foot to foot. The bloodmoss ointment has worked wonders on Will’s hand and whilst he’s still wearing the bandages, a day and a half of it has already caused the skin to start healing over. The relief John felt at that is beyond words; he’s so grateful that Mary remembered it, that he still had the tin hidden away.

“Yes, Dad,” Will says patiently. “I’ve got the safest job.”

“And you know the route?”

“Yeah.”

John knows he shouldn’t be worried. Lyra and Will have spent the last two days roaming Cittagazze between the point that correlates to their house and the point that correlates to Sir Charles Latrom’s. All Will has to do is cut in, grab the alethiometer, and cut out again. But still, there is something about bringing his fourteen year old son on a mission that itches at him. John’s worked with kids only a few years older than Will in the Marines, but they’d been through the hellhole that is Lympstone. They weren’t his son. He’s not happy about bringing Lyra either, really, wishes he could call up his old friends to come and help but there’s no way he can drag them and their normality into the fever dream that’s become his life. At least Lyra’s been in battles before, is as fierce a fighter as any teenager he’s ever seen. It’s a small comfort.

“Ok,” Will says, pulling up the hood of his coat and unsheathing the knife. “Give me five minutes to get in position before you ring the doorbell.”

Those five minutes stretch by endlessly. Lyra, Pan, and Sayan are all quiet as Will disappears into thin air, pinching it shut behind him. Lyra is fidgeting with the sleeve of her coat. The warm summer night breeze rustles idle fingers through the trees above their head.

“Time,” John says, glancing at his watch and triple-checking the knife holstered under his shirt. “Come on. Let’s go.”

They traipse up the driveway to the house, feet crunching on the gravel. The house is still and silent, but they can see a light on in the hall. John can feel his pulse jumping. He’s been in far more dangerous situations, granted, but this is different. These kinds of power games are well beyond his experience. There are footsteps and the door cracks open.

“Good evening, Dr Parry,” Sir Charles says. “Good evening, Lyra. Good news, I hope?”

“I’m afraid not,” John says. Elaine had drafted them a plausible story. They’ve just got to deliver it in a believable way. “We weren’t able to get the knife.”

“How unexpected,” Sir Charles says. “I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed. I had you pegged as the fearless adventurer type, Lyra.”

“We tried,” Lyra’s voice is wobbling, and John’s struck not for the first time by what an adept liar she is. “We really did. But we couldn’t find it. Someone had stolen it or something.”

“What a shame.”

There are tears shining in Lyra’s eyes now. Pan has turned into a tiny bird, is tucked into her hair. “Is there anything else we can do to get it back?” Lyra hiccups.

Sir Charles shakes his head. “I’m afraid my terms stand. As a courtesy to your efforts, I will keep the deal open. If you should happen across the knife in the future and can find a way to get it to me, then the alethiometer is yours.”

“But I…” Lyra sniffles.

“Alright,” John says. It should have been long enough for Will now. He can’t drag this out, make Sir Charles suspicious. This is an awful business, and he will be very pleased to be done with it, to be setting out in search of Asriel. “Thank you.”

Sir Charles inclines his head. “My pleasure,”, then, unexpectedly asks: “Are you in any great rush this evening, Dr Parry?”

“No,” John says, cautious.

 _Careful,_ Sayan whispers.

“Wonderful. I have a guest staying with me at the moment who is a big fan of you and Dr Malone’s work. Would you have time for a quick chat?”

“I’m afraid I…”

“I promise we wouldn’t keep you long. She’s got some influence with government funding, is interested in lending a hand. I know what your funding situation is like, Dr Parry.”

John glances down at Lyra, who pulls the tiniest of faces in response.

“Alright,” he says, grudging. He doesn’t like the fact the situation has suddenly developed new parameters. This happened often in the Marines, but usually he had men at his back and air support a radio away. This happened less in Lyra’s world, but even then he usually had a gun and the powers Hánno had taught him how to access. He’s not gone into a situation so unprepared in many years, has a tiny prickling feeling that this is not about funding but cannot find a polite way to refuse.

They follow Sir Charles into the house. He gestures them down the dark stairs into the reception gallery they’d been to before. Three things happen at once.

John hears the sound of the lock turning in the door.

A slim, dark-haired white woman in a sleek suit is rising to her feet, a golden monkey bounding over the side of the chair onto the floor.

And next to him, he hears Lyra say, clearly terrified, “No. No, no, no, _no._ ”

 _Shit,_ Sayan says. John shifts his weight, looks between them. Sir Charles is coming down the stairs now, brushing past them.

“See, Marisa,” he’s saying. “I told you.”

“So you did, Carlo,” she says, almost toneless.

“Where’s the-” he starts, his snake dæmon sliding out his sleeve and onto the dark sofa. In an instant, the golden monkey leaps up and catches it, almost too fast to be seen, and smacks its head violently against the edge of the table. John hears a crack and the dæmon dissipates into golden dust. Sir Charles collapses, fitting, hitting his head against the floor with a horrible noise and lies still.

“That’s better,” the woman says. “I was getting rather tired of him.”

The golden monkey looks up at her with no expression on its face and then leaps, hand over foot away from her, climbing the bannister and perching at the top of it. The woman hasn’t moved. Sayan turns on John’s shoulder.

 _Eyes on,_ she says. _I told you we should have brought a sniper._

“Lyra,” the woman says.

John can feel Lyra shaking, glances briefly down at her. Her face has lost all its colour and she’s staring, unmoving and wide-eyed at the woman, fists clenched so hard she’s at risk of breaking something. He carefully and deliberately shifts so he’s in between them, making sure Lyra can still see the threat.

“You don’t want to do that, Dr Parry,” the woman says. There’s a tremble in her voice, but John isn’t fool enough to fall for it. He can tell at a glance that she’s used to being underestimated by men, that she uses it to her advantage.

“Who are you?”

“Marisa Coulter,” she says with a smile that does not reach her eyes. “And I’m Lyra’s mother.”

John stares at her for a second. There’s similarity there, he can see that, but this woman is perfectly dressed and made up and holding herself in a way Lyra has never. She looks like one of the CIA agents he met out in Afghanistan, the ones hired to make people disappear in horribly gruesome ways. She has the same set to her mouth, the same look in her eyes.

“It’s true,” Lyra whispers behind him. “She is.”

“I’ve been looking for you, my darling,” Coulter says. She sounds so sweet, so hurt. He wonders how many people have fallen for the act. “Why did you run away?”

Lyra doesn’t respond except to shift a little bit closer to John. It tells John everything he needs to know.

“Lyra, please.” Coulter tries again. There are tears glimmering in her eyes now, her face is a mask of restrained emotion. “I only wanted to protect you. I have only _ever_ wanted to protect you. Look, we’ll get you your alethiometer from Boreal’s little collection. I can tell you more about Dust, if you like. I can tell you why your father did what he did, to you, to your friend. I’ll tell you everything.”

John glances back at Lyra. She looks like she’s about to cry too, like she wants nothing in the world for her mother to be telling the truth, for her mother to be someone she can trust. His heart aches for her.

“Don’t you want that?” Coulter asks.

“I already know about Dust,” Lyra says, lifting her chin, and John’s been in battles, he’s been in wars, and he hasn’t seen bravery like this in a long time, “and I’m not going _anywhere_ with you.”

Coulter’s expression flickers just once, hurt.

“So be it,” she says and the golden monkey leaps off the bannister and crashes into Pan, ripping him from Lyra’s shoulder and tumbling to the floor. Lyra screams and Sayan is hurling herself into the air with a war cry, dive-bombing the wrestling dæmons. In an instant, Coulter has pulled a small silver gun from her waistband and aimed it directly at John’s chest.

“Call her off or you both die,” she says.

“Stop hurting Lyra,” he snaps back, hand finding the knife, unstrapping the sheath.

“Stop fighting and I will.” Her hands are unwavering on the gun. “I don’t want to, you know. But this is for her own good.”

 _Sayan,_ he says, and then out loud, disgusted as Sayan circles the room, “I fail to see how hurting your child is _ever_ for their own good.”

“Oh but you have a son, don’t you? Boreal said. Little Will. Except I’m sure he’s not so little now, is he?”

“Do not talk about my son.”

“I hear he and Lyra are friends,” she says. “That can’t be allowed to continue. Not if the prophecy is to be stopped. Not if she’s to be safe.”

The golden monkey has Pan – a bird – in his mouth, is shaking him back and forth. Lyra is on the floor, reaching for him, retching. John edges carefully towards her, running disarmament strategies through in his head and waiting for the right moment to strike. He hasn’t had to fight like this in the longest time but there are some things your body doesn’t forget. And he’s got to win this one. He can’t let this woman win.

“Oh no,” Coulter says, almost a purr. “Nice try.”

She fires once. The bullet whips past his arm, slicing a shallow gash through his shirt and skin. In the two seconds he takes to find his balance, she has barrelled into him. He stops thinking, just reacts, move for move for move, cursing himself for falling this far out of practise. What she lacks in brute strength she makes up for in sheer viciousness, elbows and knees and fingernails, and she backs him against the wall, jams the gun up under his chin. The golden monkey gives Pan one last ruthless shake and Lyra passes out.

Coulter looks down at the knife point pressing into her stomach. Then she looks up. Her face is uncomfortably close, and he can smell her thick, cloying perfume.

“You seem like a reasonable man,” she says. “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”

John glances at Lyra, flat out on the floor, pushes down the rage boiling under his skin. “No, he says curtly. “We can’t.”

Her face hardens, the mask drops. “Between the two of us, I have the upper hand.”

“I’d like to see you get anywhere with a knife in your kidney.”

“It’s more survivable than a bullet to the jugular.”

John calculates his or Sayan’s chances of knocking her arm before she can fire, decides it’s too much of a risk.

“If I don’t shoot you,” she says, “will you let us go? Will you let me take her somewhere safe?”

“The act’s not going to work on me.”

“It’s not an act. I love her.”

“A fine job you’re doing of showing it.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“I understand just fine,” John grits out. He shifts just a little. Sayan is thinking incoherent flashes of ideas in his direction. The golden monkey still has Pan clenched between his teeth, is watching them, unmoving. Waiting.

Coulter’s eyes darken. “You don’t and you never will. It’s your choice, Dr Parry. Let us go or I’ll kill her right now. It’s either dead or with me. I am going to keep my daughter safe if it is the last thing I do.”

She’s deadly serious, he realises, horrified. Completely and deadly serious. He nods but doesn’t lower the knife until she steps away. What else can he do? Sayan screeches once. Coulter gives him a reflexive smile, almost pained, and then backs up, lowering the gun and lifting Lyra gently into her arms. She disappears up the stairs without a backward glance. John’s legs give out and he slumps against the wall. His arm is bleeding, and he can feel his face stinging where Coulter scratched him.

“Fuck,” he says, and then lashes out, kicks the nearest cabinet. “ _Fuck._ ”

“John,” Sayan has flown back.

“I know. I _know._ ” He buries his face into his hands. Her talons are digging into his knee where she’s landed. “Fuck. How could I let this happen?”

“You weren’t to know,” Sayan replies fiercely. “Come on, John. We had no idea. You did your best.”

“Not good enough. I can’t believe I…”

“We’re not like this,” Sayan says, ruthless. “Come on. If we’d died, Lyra would still be gone. We’re alive. That means we can get her back. We need to go regroup, plan. And Will got the alethiometer. That’s good.”

“Ok,” John says shortly and pushes himself up off the floor. They climb the stairs without a second look at Sir Charles’ dead body. The house is eerie, quiet, and he shuts the door behind him. The Tesla is gone from the driveway. They drive home in silence. Elaine has the front door open before he’s even out of the car. Her smile slides straight off her face as she clocks the fact he’s alone.

“Where’s Lyra?” she asks, and then, as he comes into the light, “John, you’re bleeding! What happened?”

“Is Will back?” John asks, heart in his throat. If Will’s been hurt again that will be the last straw.

“Not yet,” Elaine says, pulling him into the kitchen. Mary is rising to her feet, abandoning her notebook. The back door is open, and seconds later there’s a faint noise and Will is barrelling through it, clutching the alethiometer. His cheeks are flushed and John exhales, sharply. At least he’s ok. At least one of them is ok.

“I saw Lyra in Cittagazze,” he says, words tripping over themselves. “She was being carried by this woman with a golden monkey dæmon and she was unconscious and Dad what _happened_?”

In a moment of clarity, John remembers the map on Sir Charles’ wall, the golden rings. One had been where Will’s window was. There must have been two of them. Of course.

“Her mother,” John says. “That’s her mother.”

Will’s face is aghast. “Her _mother_?”

“Had she told you anything?”

“No, not much, but…”

“Her mother nearly killed Sayan and I,” John says. “She killed Sir Charles, and then she attacked Lyra. She had a gun. If I didn’t let her go she was going to kill Lyra too.”

“Fuck,” Will says. John doesn’t call him out on his language, not now. He’s looking around at them all, pleading, as if the girl they’d all met five days ago hadn’t already become an indelible part of their lives, another member of their family, someone to keep safe at all costs. “We’re not just leaving her, though? We’re going to get her back, right?”

John steps forward and pulls his shaking son into a hug, holds him close. “Yes, Will,” he says. “Yes, we’re going to get her back.”


	5. east

The light in the new world is unbelievable. Perhaps Lee’s too used to the near constant-darkness of the North by now, but it’s been five days since the portal and he still isn’t used to the way it turns the clouds gold, the fiery explosions of sunsets, the shadows it makes across the hills and thickly forested mountains. Kaisa has been swooping in and out of the clouds like a needle, up and down to the land below; some of the people that remain talk of a dirty, scrawny child with brown hair and a dog travelling west, weeks ago now. It has to be Lyra. There’s no one else it could be. He just hopes he gets to her before someone else does.

“He’s coming back again,” Hester says from her perch on the shelf at the lip of the balloon, and Lee abandons his instruments just as Kaisa alights, folding his wings and inclining his stately head.

“Anything?” Lee asks.

“Travellers,” Kaisa replies. “Or rather, a traveller’s dæmon. She says her person is looking for Lyra as well.”

“Are they-”

“Not the Magisterium.” Kaisa ruffles his feathers, arches his neck. “I did not hear the whole story, but I believe we should land. There is an abandoned mine I flew over where you can refuel. I told them to meet us there.”

Lee looks at Hester, who flattens her ears in her version of a shrug. “Alright,” he says, “it can’t hurt.”

He makes all the preparations to land and Kaisa takes off again to guide them into a craggy bowl-shaped valley with a tell-tale exhaust vent in the ground. He gets out, anchors the balloon, and begins to refill it, just in case they need to make a speedy getaway. And then they wait, for hours. Lee tries to rest, finds that his head is filled with half-baked ideas and thoughts as to where Lyra might have got to, wonders who the travellers are and why they are looking for her. He winds up pacing around the valley with Hester hopping behind him. He’s always hated waiting.

It is twilight when he finally spots the travellers – two figures and a bird circling above their heads.

 _She’s far away,_ Hester says. _Too far._

 _That’s got to hurt,_ Lee agrees.

_Be careful, Lee._

He gives her a quick smile, doesn’t dignify it with a response that she won’t believe. It’s more rote by now, more of a prayer to whatever deity is listening. Hester gave up on trying to tame his reckless tendencies a long time ago, has settled comfortably into complaining about them instead. Even so, he settles his hand on his revolver as they get closer, curls his fingers around the handle. Both of them are carrying packs, and both are armed – he can see the holsters and sheaths, the glint of a rifle. The bird has finally swooped down to a distance that doesn’t make Lee flinch, and the three of them step into the circle of lamplight. Lee looks between them, not relaxing his posture. It’s an older white man who carries himself like a soldier and a teenage boy with brown skin and curly hair. The dæmon – the _one_ dæmon – is some bird-of-prey, her claws wickedly sharp. Both of them look exhausted. Neither of them have drawn their weapons but the older man obviously clocks Lee’s gun, the knife, the loaded rifle propped against the balloon basket.

“Lee Scoresby,” Lee says eventually, cracking the silence. “My dæmon, Hester. I hear you’re looking for a little girl called Lyra.”

The boy’s eyes widen, the lamplight glinting off them. “ _You’re_ Lee Scoresby?”

Lee looks him up and down – he’s gangly, in the way of a kid who’s recently grown, but he carries himself with confidence – and raises an eyebrow. Before he or Hester can say anything, the boy has backtracked.

“It’s just she talked about you, all the time. You and Iorek Byrnison.”

 _Well there’s no way they could’ve known that if she didn’t trust them,_ Hester says quietly, and Lee nods, pleased by the thought that Lyra still tells stories about him. He clears his throat. “Did she now?”

The man shifts and Lee looks at him. “John Parry,” he says. “This is my son, Will, and my dæmon, Sayan Kotor. Lyra was staying with us.”

Lee doesn’t know what he’s about to ask: why she isn’t with them now, did she run away because if she was running from them there is no way in hell they’re getting any help from him, but Mr Parry beats him to it.

“She was kidnapped by her mother five days ago. You wouldn’t have seen them? A dark-haired woman with a golden monkey dæmon?”

Lee stares at him, blood turning painfully to ice. Fuck. Fuck fuck _fuck._ He’s failed. He was supposed to get there before her and… _fuck._ “I wish I had,” he says eventually. “That ain’t the news I hoped to find.”

“I’m sorry not to bring better,” Mr Parry says. He sounds genuine, Lee will give him that.

“Do you know what she wants with Lyra?” the boy, Will, asks. His shoulders are very tense, but the dark circles under his eyes tell a different story.

“Nothing good,” Lee says, releasing his gun to press fingers into his eyes.

Kaisa, who has been silently observing until now, walks in between them, inclines his head in greeting to the travellers. “Mrs Marisa Coulter was a feared agent of the Magisterium.”

Mr Parry sighs, heavily. “That explains a lot.”

“Was?” Will demands.

“No-one quite knows what she’s doing now. She was last seen in our world by a patrol of witches boarding a fast steamer east.”

“With Lyra?”

Kaisa pauses, then, heavily, as though it’s just occurred to him: “they reported a suspiciously overlarge suitcase, but we did not give the matter much consideration.”

They all look at each other in complete silence. Lee clenches his fists tightly at the thought of little Lyra – good, brave, fierce Lyra – stuffed into a suitcase like dirty laundry. The girl’s one of the best escape artists he’s ever seen, but he has no idea how she’d escape something like that. How _anyone_ could escape something like that. Santa Maria but he thought Mrs Coulter – evil as she is – at least cared about keeping Lyra safe. He had no idea she meant _this._

“That’s what they meant by east,” Mr Parry murmurs to himself, and his dæmon – Sayan – ruffles her wings.

“They…” Lee changes tack at the expression on Mr Parry’s face, “Where exactly have you travelled from? Lyra was in this world, right?”

“For a time,” Mr Parry says.

“She was in our world,” Will continues, in a way that suggests their world is something entirely different. Lee reminds himself to breathe, and Hester shifts about an inch closer to his trouser leg.

“There’s more? More worlds?”

Mr Parry gives him a faint smile. “Uncountable millions.”

“So how did you get through?”

Will and Mr Parry look at each other for a long moment, Will uncertain, Mr Parry considering. Lee holds his ground, waits. He might get himself into a lot of shit by asking questions, but he always prefers to know where he stands before he makes a decision, consequences of said questions be damned. Evidently they come to some kind of silent agreement because Will sighs, scuffs his foot and goes to unbuckle the sheath hooked around his waist.

“I’m trusting you’re not Magisterium, either,” Mr Parry says. To his credit, his hand doesn’t drift towards his own weapon, but Lee’s under no illusions that this man isn’t absolutely deadly when he wishes to be. If Mr Parry wanted Lee dead, Lee would probably have a hard time fighting him off.

“No,” he says. Kaisa also spreads his wings, joins in: “Have it on the faith of Serafina Pekkala, Queen of the Witches of Lake Enara.”

“Lake Enara,” Mr Parry echoes. “Well. That’s good enough for me.”

“Dad, are you…” Will asks.

“Yes. The Lake Enara witches are not known for their love of the Magisterium,” Mr Parry says evenly. “You can show him.”

Will gives his father another look, and then pulls a small knife out of the sheath, holds it up for Lee to see. It looks deadly, _deadly_ sharp – one side a pure bright silver and the other oily, murky, swirling with dark rainbows of colour. He resists the urge to take a step back.

“This cuts windows between other worlds,” Will says, and then twists his hand and does just that, hooking the knife into the air and slicing downwards in one neat stroke. “Careful, we’re high up here.”

Lee peers through and down onto the vibrant green forests of another world laid out below him and feels his knees wobble, takes another step back. “Well I’ll be damned,” he breathes as Will reaches out a bandaged hand to slide the window shut. “And it’s yours?”

“It chose me, yes,” Will says, far too steady. He meets Lee’s eyes with an expression too old and worn for someone so young. “All we want is for Lyra to be free and safe, Mr Scoresby. That is _all_ we want.”

 _Well they’ve been honest with us,_ Hester murmurs and hops forward towards Sayan Kotor, sitting up on her haunches to talk to her.

“So you’ll be heading through the portal to find her,” Lee says after a moment’s silence.

“We hope so,” Mr Parry says. “Though who knows where she’ll be by now.”

“Can’t help you there,” Lee agrees. “But I can say that you’ll be quicker by air.”

“You’re-” Mr Parry starts, and Lee gives him a quick, hard smile.

“Have you ever travelled by balloon before?”

Mr Parry meets his smile, and Lee doesn’t need to be looking to know that Will is too. “There’s a first time for everything, Mr Scoresby.”

*

“Well it certainly looks like a cave,” Elaine says, shutting the heavy door behind her. “Did you opt for the most lightless room in the place intentionally?”

“It was the only lab space available for hire with the right specs,” Mary replies, walking purposefully across the room and settling down into her chair and flicking switches on the bank in front of her. The machine behind the glass hums and flickers into uncertain life. Elaine stays by the door, watching. They’ve been working on this for the last week, ever since John and Will cut out of this world and disappeared into the next. Well. Mary has been coding a programme late into the nights and Elaine has been researching everything she can get her hands on truth and fortune-telling in different cultures around the globe, hoping to shed some light on the alethiometer and the Cave’s apparent reaction to Mary’s old I Ching set. It’s been a distraction from her head. She knows that she’s the one who told John to go, who told him that this was bigger than any of them as individuals, that sometimes destiny comes calling, that she knows this now. That she can’t leave Mary alone. That it makes no sense to give Will three adults to protect from the Spectres instead of one. That this is nothing like last time – that he and Will are getting Lyra, and then picking them up, and then going to Asriel.

He’d held her that last night, both of them lying awake and in each other’s arms. Neither of them had needed to say anything but Elaine knows they’d both been wondering if this was the last time. If this was it.

“As long as Will’s got the knife,” she’d said the morning of their departure, sitting cross legged on the bed as he’d dressed, “as long as Will’s got the knife then you can get back. It will be fine.”

He’d kissed her, long and slow. “Ok,” he’d said. “I’ll see you soon, then.”

“See you soon,” she’d said. “Give Lyra the biggest hug from me when you rescue her, okay?”

The voices haven’t been as bad as she was expecting. She’d been to see her therapist and she’s been busy with this, but still the tension lurks. She doesn’t like not knowing what they’re doing, what they’re facing. She doesn’t like the idea of her fourteen-year-old son walking into god-knows-what. But she knows that John will keep him safe. John will let nothing happen to Will because anything else is unthinkable.

“Ready, Elaine?” Mary calls, spinning around and patting the chair. Elaine moves over to her, sits down in the same chair, thigh-to-thigh, half hanging off it. They used to do this in those early years when Mary would be ranting about the undergraduate problems she had to mark and Elaine would look for poetry inspiration and distraction in the pages of maths.

“Yeah,” Elaine says. “Hit it, science lady.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Mary reaches for the electrodes. Elaine doesn’t _really_ understand all the computers or the science babble – she just knows that Mary is trying to recreate something Lyra had done. She watches as Mary sticks the electrodes to her forehead, wriggles her shoulders, takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. She stays as still as possible, watching the particulate, silvery lines on the computer screen. Her breathing evens out with Mary’s. She drifts in the quiet.

“Show me,” Mary says, soft and firm.

“Ask a question,” a voice says, the silvery lines bending. Elaine’s heart jolts in surprise and she feels Mary stiffen. It’s a curiously genderless voice, echoing, and she knows she should be scared but she can’t bring herself to be. Mary’s hand finds hers, sweaty.

“Are you shadows?” Mary asks.

“Yes.”

“Are shadows the same as Lyra’s Dust?”

“Yes.”

“And is dust dark matter?”

“Yes.”

“So dark matter is conscious.”

“Evidently,” the voice says, sarcastic, and Elaine snorts, amused, then for some reason feels like the attention of the… _being…_ talking to them has shifted briefly to her, before Mary continues asking questions and the feeling lessens.

“The mind that’s answering these questions…it isn’t human, is it?”

“No, but humans have always known us.”

“There’s more than one of you?”

“Uncountable billions.”

“What are you?” Elaine can’t stop herself, sure she knows the answer before the voice speaks.

"Angels,” it says. Mary’s whole body is trembling beside Elaine’s. She squeezes Mary’s hand. Her heart is pounding. They’re speaking to _angels._ Angels are real, are perhaps nothing and everything like she thought they would be. A tiny sarcastic part of her brain laughs at the fact that Mary Malone, former nun, is getting confirmed to her everything she stopped believing in.

“So angels are beings of dark matter?” Mary asks. “And…spirit?”

“What we are is spirit, and what we do is matter. They are one and the same. We have been guiding humanity for centuries.”

“So angels have intervened in human evolution?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

There is silence, and then the voice says, laced with a tone Elaine cannot decipher: “Vengeance.”

Elaine’s head is reeling, and the words trip out of her mouth before she can stop them. “Does it have anything to do with Asriel’s war?” she asks.

“Yes,” the angels say, the curious attention feeling coming back even stronger. Elaine feels like every nerve in her body is fizzing. “The war is what we have been waiting for. The pieces are coming together. The armies are drawing their lines of battle.”

“And do we have a part to play?”

“Yes,” the angels say. Mary’s looking at Elaine now, her face very close, but Elaine is totally focussed on the screen, on the voice. “You both must take a journey. You must play the serpent.”

“What-” Mary starts.

“You must journey through worlds. Deceive the guardian of the window. Travel to the mountains. Save the girl and the boy. Stop the flood. You will be protected from all harm.” Then, “Mary Malone, your work here is done. We will not speak in this world again.”

There is a crash and the Cave fountains sparks. The power shuts out and the room plunges abruptly into darkness. After a second, a lone emergency light flickers on. Elaine and Mary look at each other. Elaine’s blood is singing. Her head is writing verses, stanzas, epics. She hasn’t felt this full of purpose before; she’s brimming with it, full to burst. Perhaps John was right. Perhaps there’s more to her life than chronicling the adventures of others.

“Play the serpent,” Mary says after a second. “I can’t believe it. What just happened.”

“I can,” Elaine says.

“Of course you can,” Mary says, waving her hands. “This is your thing, not mine. This isn’t a replicable experiment, this is…fantasy-land.”

“The only difference between fantasy and reality is the construction of agreed-upon rules,” Elaine says, and Mary groans, buries her face in her hands. Elaine takes pity on her. “It is rather Paradise Lost, isn’t it?”

“It’s _ridiculous._ ”

“Come on, Mary,” Elaine stands, stretches. “It’s not every day we get given an important task by angels.”

“You are not freaking out as much as you should be.”

“We’ve known about other worlds for a decade.”

“There’s other worlds and there’s _angels._ ”

“I’m just pleased to have something to do,” Elaine says, changing the subject and Mary looks up, her face suddenly soft.

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“We should go and pack. Check the map for the location of that other window.” She pauses as Mary gets up, takes up her jacket. “The boy and the girl. Do you think they mean Will and Lyra?”

Mary gives her a look in the darkness, shrugs. “I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”

*

“Miss, are you from another world?” Angelica asks.

They’ve been climbing the rolling hills west of Cittagazze for a few days now – Mary, Elaine, and two orphan sisters – Angelica and Paola – they picked up on their first day in the city. It had been bizarre, leaving a big note for John and Will stuck to the fridge, leaving the car at Redbridge Park and Ride, and tricking the guard at the electric generator that she was Mrs Coulter and Elaine her assistant. He’d let them through and they’d stared at the ghostly silver window to Cittagazze.

“You ready?” she’d asked.

“Terrified,” Elaine had replied.

Mary had taken her hand and they’d stepped through. They’d spotted the Spectres quite quickly, the grey drift of them floating in the wind. They’d started to come closer, sinister, silent, but suddenly had stopped, jerked backwards, floating determinedly over each other in an attempt to get away. Mary had stared at them for a second, and then a glint of refracted light above Elaine’s head had caught her eye.

“I think they meant it when they said protection,” Elaine had murmured. “Come on, I want to get out of here.”

An hour later, they’d found the girls. They had been following Mary and Elaine, the only two left of the gang that had attacked Lyra and Will. Mary had been unsure at first, but they’re only little – nine and eleven, younger than even Lyra and Will and neither she nor Elaine could stand the thought of leaving them in the abandoned city when the I Ching has set them in the same direction all the adults fled to. Paola is now walking ahead with Elaine, holding her hand and listening to whatever story Elaine has made up for her. Angelica has hung back silently with Mary today. She’s been wary and quiet for the most part, which is why Mary is surprised by the question.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re not scared of Spectres. And she looks like the boy Lyra was with.” Angelica glances over at Mary’s walking leggings, her Gore-Tex coat. “And you’ve got weird clothes. Sorry.”

“Elaine’s Will’s mum,” Mary says, electing to address the easiest bit first. And then, because she sees no point in lying, “yes, we are.”

Angelica chews this over for a few steps, and then nods. “So Mamma was right.”

“Huh?”

“Mamma used to tell me and Tullio and Paola stories about the guild of philosophers and the other worlds they visited, but we didn’t think they were real. Do people know about other worlds in your world?”

“Most people don’t,” Mary says. “Our family only do because Elaine’s husband got lost in one for a while several years back.”

“But he came back?”

“Miraculously, yes.”

“Isn’t it weird,” Angelica says. “Different worlds all next to each other.” Then, with confidence, “it _is_ weird. We could be walking through people’s bodies right now.”

“We probably are, mathematically speaking,” Mary says. “Tell me about this world, then, before the Spectres came. What was it like?”

Angelica gives her a sideways look, pleased to be asked, and launches into tales of her parents and her family and the festivals and her open-air school and all the people who used to throng the streets of Cittagazze. She’s still going – with additions from Paola – over dinner that night, and when they curl up together and go to sleep, Elaine shifts over to sit next to Mary, watching them.

“They’re sweet, aren’t they?” she says. “I can’t reconcile it in my head with what Lyra and Will told us.”

“Neither,” Mary says. “But kids are like that, aren’t they? The best and the worst, all rolled into one.”

“Maybe that’s what innocence is,” Elaine hums. Her eyes are fixed on the fire. “Not goodness. Just inexperience. Just charting the most convenient path at any given time and not giving a damn for the cage of society adults lock themselves into.”

“Lord of the Flies,” Mary says.

“Jean Jacques Rousseau,” Elaine counters. “What is human nature, at the end of it all?”

“To question,” Mary says. “To think.”

“To chart a course,” Elaine murmurs, and then glances up at the stars, bright, and then over to Mary. “I wish we could talk to them.”

Mary spares a thought for Will and John, probably somewhere else in this world, looking for Lyra as they speak. She spares a thought for Lyra, how alone and terrified she must be. She hasn’t been letting herself think about it, knows there’s nothing she can do. “Yeah. Me too. How are you doing?”

“Better than I thought I’d be,” Elaine says. “I’m glad I’m not stuck at home waiting. I’ve spent so much of my life waiting. I think that might have been part of why my head is the way it is.”

“Really? I don’t see that.”

“Well before I met John I was just counting days. Working. Following a succession of friends around the place. And then I was writing letters and waiting for him. The travelling and everything was a brief hiatus from it all, and then when he went missing it was back to waiting again,” Elaine sighs. “Waiting, waiting, always waiting. Like Penelope, stitching the time away.”

“Not anymore,” Mary says. “Quests wait for no woman.”

Elaine catches her eye and says, “Fellowship eat our hearts out,” and Mary snorts with laughter, tries to swallow it so as not to disturb the girls.

“At least there’s no orcs. That’s a bit too much adventure for me.”

“You never know. We could end up in a world with orcs.”

“As long as there’s an Eowyn to fight them off for me,” Mary says. “That would be great.”

Elaine smiles at her in the firelight. “I’m so glad we’re together. I’m so glad we became friends.”

“Me too,” Mary says. “Me too.”

The next day, they reach the encampment of refugees and drop Angelica and Paola off with their adults, quickly moving on to avoid any questions. They climb up and up and up, following as best they can the vague instructions the I Ching gives them, sometimes discussing books or the future, sometimes walking and breathing in the thin mountain air, the complete and utter quiet. Eventually they reach a waterfall and by the waterfall is a slit in mid-air, the edges shimmering like a rainbow looked at sideways. Elaine goes first, scraping her fingers along the edges of it.

“Fingers on the edges of reality,” she murmurs to herself, always creating poetry. Mary smiles as she disappears, takes one last breath of this air and follows her through. They are knee-deep in grass on a plain that stretches for miles. The sun is gentle and forgiving. There are shadows of great trees clustered on the horizon, a strange flat lava flow a hundred metres to their right.

“Onwards?” Elaine says, turning to her. Her face is darker, her eyes brighter, and she tilts her head to the sky.

“Onwards,” Mary says. “Let’s go.”

*

Mr Scoresby’s balloon is a work of mechanical genius. Will stands at the rail facing east, fiddling with the gun Dad had handed over in the shop in Cittagazze all those days ago, eyes serious and mouth set. Will knows Dad is ex-military, has seen his medals, met his friends, but he’d never thought _soldier_ until the moment Dad was teaching him how to fire a gun with easy grace, until Dad had put his hands on Will’s shoulders and said: “If we get into difficulty, I want you to cut us out of here, ok? I don’t want you using it unless you have no other choice.”

Will sort of wishes he could fling the horrible thing over the side, but knows that he can’t, knows that there is too much at stake for him not to be armed and ready.

They’ve been flying on a steady eastern breeze for the last two days. There hadn’t been enough wind to begin with and Will had watched out of the corner of his eye as Dad had tucked himself into a corner of the balloon, pulled his hood over his head, and begun to murmur soundlessly to himself, twisting his fingers together, his brow furrowed in concentration. Mr Scoresby – call me Lee, kid – had given Dad several wary looks, and then looked at Will as if to go _what the hell is he doing?_

As if in answer, the wind had begun to pick up, faithful and strong, blowing them faster and faster along the spine of the mountains. Will had gripped the basket tightly, internally freaking out too that Dad can apparently now control the _weather_ what the _hell_ but knowing that he can’t appear surprised. Dad isn’t one hundred percent sure about Lee yet, and that means presenting a united front. He thinks Hester might be onto him from the look she gave him, but she’s not said a word. The shock of ridiculous magic powers aside, he’s glad of it. He’s glad to be moving. He was glad to be walking too, after three days of scrying and careful preparation and a restless anger so hot he could have boiled alive in it, but this is better, quicker. They know where she is, now, kind of. Even so, the worry is a beast in the pit of his stomach, howling and clawing to be let out, and he can’t do anything about it except set his eyes on the towering clouds and tap his fingers against the rail and think _we’re coming, Lyra, we’re coming, hold on._

Lee is currently crouched over the little stove, cursing at it in an attempt to start boiling water for dinner. “You gonna magic us up some fire too, Mr Parry?”

Dad looks up from where he’s studying Lee’s instruments, and Will catches the moment Dad decides he’s going to be ‘funny.’ Will braces himself for acute embarrassment as Dad pretends to put on a serious shaman face, closes his eyes and spreads his hands and then, quickly, pulls a box of plastic-wrapped matches from his pocket and tosses them to Lee. “Fire.”

“Daaaad,” Will complains, half for show and briefly thinking of Mum. She would have laughed, delighted by Dad’s horrible sense of humour, and Mary would have grinned and rolled her eyes. He wishes they were here – wishes he could see Mary nerding out over the balloon and Mum logging the weather and talking about pathetic fallacy. It’s weird to be somewhere without them after all the adventures they’ve been on together.

Lee holds up the matches and frowns, exaggerated. “And there I was, expecting to be impressed.” Then, examining the plastic, “this is neat. What material is this?”

Will sees Dad open his mouth and interrupts, “Oh my god, do not get him started.”

“Fire-lighting backups are very important, Will.”

“I _know._ You’ve told me at least fifteen times.”

“I know. Parents are awful nags, aren’t they?”

“Yes, you are,” Will says and abandons the rail for the centre of the balloon. Dad joins Lee on the floor to discuss dinner or whatever, and Will spends more time examining the structure of the balloon, all the dials and catches and levers that Lee operates without even looking at them most of the time. Eventually, he becomes aware that Lee is standing behind him, watching, whilst Dad rustles around in the bags down by the stove.

“Want me to show you some things whilst he cooks?”

“Um,” Will says, “Sure.”

“Ok,” Lee actually rubs his hands together, his expression nearly identical to Dad’s whenever Dad gets going about survival skills. He hears that little voice again, sarcastic, _oh god, there are two of them,_ as Lee launches into a fascinating explanation of the mechanics behind ballooning, and Will wraps his arms around himself and thinks back, _yeah. Send help?_ The little dæmon-voice laughs. _Sorry,_ it says. _I think we’re stuck._

*

The balloon is dark and lamplit. Lee has hitched most of the canvas around the balloon to preserve heat against the fog, left one gap open so he can keep an eye on Kaisa and Mr Parry’s dæmon Sayan, who seems not to care how far she flies from him. Lee has noted this and added it to the list of uncanny things about the Parrys – the wind thing, the knife, Will’s lack of a dæmon, the fact they’re from yet _another_ world. He hasn’t asked, though, not yet, though he is damned curious about it all. They’ve been too busy settling into a routine, teaching the pair of them how to operate the balloon, organising tasks, planning, sleeping, staying warm. When it comes down to it, practicalities take precedence over idle chat.

Right now, Mr Parry is sitting on the floor of the balloon propped up against the side. Will is fast asleep with his head on Mr Parry’s lap, his bandaged hand curled up under his chin. Lee had seen the wound when Will had re-dressed it the other day, putting on some ointment on his missing fingers. Santa Maria how that must have hurt, especially for a kid so young. Lee wonders how that went down, what Lyra’s part in it was, wonders when he’s going to ask.

He doesn’t realise he’s staring until Mr Parry is giving him a small smile.

“He used to do this when he was a tiny baby, too. Sleeps just the same. Much less drool now, though.”

Lee swallows a snort of amusement. “How old is he?”

“Fourteen. Fifteen, soon. I can’t believe how fast the time’s gone.” Mr Parry looks down at his son’s sleeping face and the love there is evident, is a beacon against the night. Lee feels warm just being in the presence of it.

 _Sweet, aren’t they?_ Hester says sleepily, and Lee has to agree. It’s a lovely thing to see, after all his experience and watching Lyra deal with hers, that there are parents who genuinely adore their children. “Are you a father, Mr Scoresby?”

“I haven’t been that lucky,” Lee says, checking the instruments one last time and then settling down on the opposite side of the balloon. Hester shuffles a bit closer, rests her head against his elbow. “Perhaps I will be, I don’t know. Doesn’t matter now. All that matters to me right now is getting Lyra back.”

“She is definitely in need of better parents.”

“How Asriel and Coulter managed to have such a good, brave girl is beyond me,” Lee says. “Though from what she’s said, I figure it’s because they didn’t have much of a hand in her upbringing.”

“Indeed.”

They fall into silence, and Hester sighs.

_Just ask him. Your itching is annoying me._

_Sorry,_ Lee says back, and then settles down on the other side of the balloon, pulls his coat around him tighter. “May I ask you something?”

Mr Parry inclines his head, so Lee continues: “How come you have a dæmon, but Will doesn’t?”

Mr Parry sighs, softly. “I was trapped in your world for a number of years when Will was little. A shaman helped me find Sayan. We don’t have dæmons in our world, at least not ones that are visible to others.” He smiles, a little amused. “People think Sayan is my pet.”

“Strange,” Hester says, her ears flat against her back, her tone a scathing indication of what she thinks of being mistaken for a pet.

“All worlds are strange to those that don’t inhabit them,” Mr Parry says.

“That must have been tough being away from him,” Lee says after a while.

“Yes. I’ve been in some situations over the years, warzones, disasters, but that…you have no idea. I hope you never have to live through anything like it.”

“You were a soldier? Yeah, me too. Thought you might be. Where did you see action?”

“Balkans. Afghanistan. Iraq.”

“Where?”

“Babylonia, I think people call it in your world.”

“Babylonia’s at _war_?”

“Endlessly, in my world. The aftermath of colonialism is brutal.”

“Ah.”

“What about you?”

“Texas. Caught up there for a while, same deal. My father was a New Danish colonist, but I left. Wanted no part of it once I’d learned enough to know they were wrong. Hired myself and this old girl out to whatever fighting force needed me after that.” Lee pauses, “hear the indigenous nations have been quite successful in my absence, but Texas has been a trading hub even before. I doubt it’ll change much, no matter who wins the war.”

“There was a genocide in my world in America,” Mr Parry says. Then, “fascinating, how the different histories have taken hold.”

“You’re right about that.”

“What do you think of this war?”

Lee shrugs. “Not sure I get the chance to have thoughts on it. It found me this time. All I want is for Lyra to be safe.” He pauses, exhales. “There’s a prophecy about her, you know. That’s why she’s at the centre of all this.”

“Do you know it?”

“She’s destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she can’t do it deliberately. She can’t know what she’s doing.”

Lee remembers Kaisa saying something about a boy too, and privately, Lee rather thinks that Will might be it. Not that he’s going to say as much to a protective father.

“The end of destiny,” Mr Parry says, thoughtful, and looks down at Will, gently presses a stray curl back and doesn’t say anything more.

A few hours later, Sayan and Kaisa land on the rail, shaking the fog from their wings, both too serene by far.

“We’re approaching the portal as I’m sure you know,” Kaisa says. “Serafina and her warriors are distracting the Magisterium forces guarding it, but you should be ready.”

“Can you do something about that, Mr Parry?” Lee asks, hauling himself to his feet and going to check the instruments again.

“I can try,” Mr Parry says, and then leans down to his son. “Will, wake up. We’re there.”

Will is awake quickly, peeling himself to his feet, squinting against the sudden brightness of the portal that appears through the fog without a second’s warning. Sayan is pitching off the rail again, back towards the portal.

“All right, kid,” Lee says, clapping Will on the shoulder. “You’re on ballast, you got me? Stay on the floor.” Then, “Mr Parry, how’s it looking?”

“Messy,” Mr Parry says, mouth a grim line. “Get ready.”

He presses a hand to Will’s head, then meets Lee’s eyes for a second. He pulls his hood up. He unholsters his rifle, checks it with careful steady motions. The portal is looming ever close, silent and blinding.

“Hold tight!” Lee yells. The balloon shakes, jerks to one side. All is silent and white and silver, thousands of strings and lines. Then they’re out. The world _explodes._ Gunfire rips past them and Lee is up on the inner railing, steering as best he can. The witches are dark smears against a darker sky. One zeppelin is already burning, drifting down and trailing sparks. The other three are firing at them, at the witches, at anything that moves. Mr Parry’s eyes are closed. He’s murmuring to himself and the clouds are massing.

Suddenly the sky splits with lightning, once, twice. Lightning wreathes around one of the zeppelins and it explodes, raining fragments of metal down on them. Lee aims the balloon for the gap between the last two. They’ve got to get out of here before something ignites the gas bag. If that happens then they are done for.

“Call a wind!” he shouts down to Mr Parry who raises a hand in acknowledgement, and the wind sparks up again. It’s not enough. It’s not going to be enough. “Will, we need to get higher!”

“Ok!” Will shouts. His hands are steady and some of the ballast goes overboard. All of a sudden, three witches are darting down beside them. Lee tosses the lead one a rope before he can even think, and they join in the wind, pulling the balloon up and over the zeppelins out of range of the guns. It thrashes back and forth in the competing winds but the witches are steady. Lee jumps down, grabs the side strut.

“Hold on,” he says, breathless. “We’re good. We’re good.”

Will is peeling himself off the floor and stumbles sideways into Mr Parry, hanging onto him. Lee can faintly make out him saying, _Jesus Christ Dad, what the hell was that,_ and Mr Parry laughing, high on adrenaline and whatever else he uses to call a fucking thunderstorm out of fucking _nowhere._

The sounds of battle and storm grow distant, and eventually when Lee looks back, the storm cloud is a tower on the horizon, lightning and the explosions flowering between its base and the jagged edge of the mountains. The balloon lowers and steadies; three witches wheel up in an arc, come to hover in the air in front of them. One is Serafina – he doesn’t recognise the other two, but the black-haired witch on the right spots Mr Parry and her face goes cold. Her hand twitches towards her bow. Lee watches Mr Parry stiffen and lift his head to look at her. His arms tighten around Will, who is still half-huddled into his side. Lee doesn’t know what the fuck is going on there, but luckily Serafina says something in a low voice and after one last, venomous look, the black-haired witch and her companion turn as one and disappear back towards the battle. Serafina drifts forward to settle on the rail of the balloon, Kaisa hopping up beside her.

“Thanks for the assist, ma’am,” Lee says. Mr Parry has tugged Will away to the other side of the balloon, is busy re-tying things that came loose in their hurried flight.

“Four zeppelins against a single balloon is not much of a fair fight, Mr Scoresby,” Serafina says, regal as ever. There’s a hint of a smile playing around her mouth. “The steamer reached the Ob estuary yesterday. The river winds towards the Himalayan range. You are perhaps several weeks behind, especially as you will land to pick up supplies. The Magisterium are mobilising all across the North. You must be careful.”

“We will,” Lee nods. “Any news on Iorek?”

“King Iorek has led his people east too, in search of unmelting snows,” Serafina’s smile turns grim. “As you will see, the environmental damage wreaked by Asriel’s bridge is…monumental.”

“And you? Where will you go?”

“Ruta Skadi has called her clan to war. My witches go too.”

“So this is it.”

“This is it, Mr Scoresby. Find Lyra. Help her as best you can.”

“It will be my honour.”

“I know.” Serafina leans forward, brushes her cool fingers across his hand. “Blessings and safe travels. May the wind be at your back.”

In the next instant, she and Kaisa are gone. After a second, Will comes to join Lee at the rail, looking out at the cracking ice-fields, the summer come too soon.

“East?” he asks.

“East,” Lee says, then, over his shoulder. “Could we get another wind, Mr Parry?”

“This will be the last one for a while,” Mr Parry says. “I’ll need to rest.”

“No rest for the blessed,” Lee says, “or was it wicked? I never know.”

Mr Parry laughs and rolls his eyes. The balloon picks up speed again, sliding east across the ice-grey sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter coming soon! :D


	6. the flight

“Look,” Lee says, exasperated, “I really don’t know what you want.”

John folds his arms, resisting the urge to sigh. He’s supposed to be playing the bad cop to Lee’s good, but after every _single_ boat charter service in Türkmenabat’s small river port has turned them away he really cannot muster the energy.

The proprietor wipes her hands down her skirt, doesn’t respond. She’s built like a brick shithouse with an even stonier face, and John knows if he were anyone else he would have given this up as a lost cause. Unfortunately, Lee doesn’t do lost causes, ad John knows that this is their last hope if they want to avoid a painful trek to the next city dragging an unflyable balloon and a very angry Will.

“I’m serious. What _is_ your problem? We just need a boat big enough for a balloon and three travellers.”

“No.”

“You’ve seen our gold. We can pay you double the boat’s worth, easy.”

“Local boat service only.”

“Who says we’re travelling far?”

The businesswoman raises an eyebrow and gives them both a pointed glance up and down that implies she calls their bullshit for all of the following reasons:

  1. their obvious foreignness,
  2. the fact they crashed a gas balloon into a local nomadic family’s very nice herd of cows, scattering them panicked and mooing to the four winds,
  3. the Magisterium agent who has been steadily dogging their footsteps ever since they landed.



“What can we do that will convince you?” John asks finally, meeting her eyes and trying for open honesty. Sayan digs her claws into his shoulder. She’d tried to talk to the woman’s cow dæmon, but even he wasn’t having any of it. “We _really_ need a boat.”

She shrugs as if to say: _and that’s my problem how?_

The bell over her shop doorway jangles behind them, and John turns to see Will just slipping in and closing the door behind him. He’s slightly flushed and looking far too pleased with himself for a teenager who’s supposed to have been innocently exploring the docks. John braces himself.

“Anything interesting?”

“We don’t need a boat,” Will says, and John blinks at him.

“Excuse me?”

“We don’t need a boat,” Will repeats, “I found an old friend.”

“An-”

“Iorek Byrnison is here. Him and his bears. I ran into him down the far quay.” Will runs a hand through his hair, looks down at his feet and then up. John is absolutely convinced that ‘ran into’ probably glosses over what actually happened – how would Iorek Byrnison know who Will was, for a start – but elects not to raise it here. “They chartered a boat on the Caspian Sea a few weeks ago. He says there’s space for us and the balloon.”

“Well thank _Jesus_ for that,” Lee says, huffing and shoving his hat back on his head. “Thanks for nothing, lady. Honestly, I never thought I’d meet a businesswoman who didn’t want business.”

“You should give them a bad TripAdvisor review,” Will suggests as the three of them traipse out of the shop.

“Yeah kid, we’re gonna do that. A bad TripAdvisor review,” Lee pauses, scratches his head, “what _is_ that?”

“Come on,” John says, amused and relieved at this sudden saving grace, “Will can tell you later.”

They cross the harbour to the far quay on the riverside, weaving between fishermen and boat-builders and warehouses. Sayan launches herself into the air, ostensibly enjoying the cool breeze coming off the Amu Darya, but really keeping an eye out for their tail. He’s a middle-aged man who blends in perfectly with the crowd apart from his foreign dæmon – a Siberian husky – and the bulge of a gun John caught a glimpse of at his hip. He’s been on their trail since they limped into Türkmenabat late yesterday afternoon and John doesn’t particularly want to be here when his reinforcements arrive. He knows that both the Magisterium and Lord Asriel’s forces are looking for Lyra, suspects that neither know about this rescue mission, but it doesn’t matter. The Magisterium know a balloon came barrelling through the portal, flying east, and they know Coulter fled this way too. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

 _They won’t do anything now,_ Sayan says, flying above his head. _Not with armoured bears around._

 _Lucky we bumped into them,_ John agrees.

_Do we want to know how Will found them?_

John regards the back of his son’s head, charging through the crowd ahead of them and shakes his head fondly. He’ll ask, but he probably won’t like the answer. Not that his liking anything matters. He hadn’t liked leaving Elaine when he promised he wouldn’t, hasn’t liked how unexpectedly long this is taking, despite the fact that adventure has always been something that called to him. He doesn’t like the fact that he’d let Coulter get away with Lyra in the first place. None of it is useful, however, so he forces himself to put it all into a box for later perusal.

The ship eases into view – a sturdy, well-made schooner – it would have to be, with the weight of the bears John can see pacing back and forth on the deck. Iorek Byrnison – or a bear John presumes is Iorek – is waiting for them at the bottom of the gangplank, Will practically vibrating at his side. John is distinctly aware of the locals giving Iorek a very wide berth and, oddly, the slightly deferential glances and whispers in Will’s direction, too.

“Iorek!” Lee calls, striding towards him. “Good to see you!”

“And you,” Iorek rumbles. “You are far from your usual haunts.”

“Pot, kettle.”

“Needs must. The ice melts. We cannot live without it so we must journey.”

“Us too. Well, not the ice. We’re looking for Lyra.”

“Yes. The young man explained,” Iorek doesn’t exactly look sheepish, but there is a certain shiftiness about his eyes, again like he’s not telling the whole story. “You believe Mrs Coulter has taken her to the Himalayas?”

There’s a question in his voice and he swings his enormous head to take them all in. John meets his gaze, sees the relentlessness, the savagery, the absolute sense that this creature both doesn’t give a damn for humans and humanity but also that he cares about Lyra just as much as the rest of them.

“Yes,” he says. “She’s in a valley of rainbows at the western end of the Himalayas, somewhere south of Nanga Parbat.”

“This is Will’s father, Mr Parry. He’s…somewhat acquainted with the spirit realm,” Lee adds.

“Useful,” Iorek agrees, then, directly to John, “your son does you credit. You have raised him well.”

John raises his eyebrows, glances at Will who shrugs, hand drifting infinitesimally towards his knife. “There was nearly a fight between the bears and the townspeople,” he explains, a little self-conscious, “I mediated.”

“He challenged me to single combat,” Iorek corrects. “And rightly so. I would be a fool to fight that knife, and I am not a fool.”

“Most of the time,” Lee mutters, which Iorek majestically ignores. John isn’t listening, has turned to Will, who is looking like he doesn’t know whether to be worried or defiant and has settled for a mixture of the two.

“It seemed like the best option,” Will says to him, quietly. “I’m sorry. There would have been a lot of bloodshed otherwise.”

“I’m not happy,” John replies, “but I trust you did what you thought best.”

Will nods, accepting. John presses his shoulder briefly, smiles at him. After a second, Will smiles back.

Iorek pauses in whatever he’s about to say to Lee, eyes catching on something over their shoulders. _The spy,_ Sayan says quietly, _soldiers._ John doesn’t turn.

“We should depart,” Iorek says, turning to lead them up and into the bowels of the ship.

*

The night is dark and Will is staring at the silent, still alethiometer cupped in his hands. Above him, the dark-blue mountains sleep like snow-flecked giants under a blanket of stars. He turns one of the knobs and then another, watching the long thin needle flick back and forth in a nonsensical pattern. He knows he won’t be able to read it but finds some comfort in doing this, in holding it, like he’s closer to Lyra. After a while he sighs and shuts the lid, folding his fingers over it and staring up at the sky and absently looks for the balloon. It’s too early for Lee and Iorek to be back from the reconnaissance flight, and even so he wouldn’t be worried. Lee has the navigational instincts of homing pigeon, even in unfamiliar territory; they’ll be absolutely fine.

It’s been a month since they set off from Türkmenabat. They spent two and a half weeks winding their way east along the Amu Darya, and then, when the boat could go no further, everyone disembarked. Most of the bears went off on their own, but Iorek stayed with them as they trekked into the mountains. At any other time in his life, Will would have been speechless with wonder at it all – the great arcs of mountains, the sheer, craggy rockfaces, winding, wooded little valleys bisected by meltwater rivers sparkling in the bright noon sun – but not now. He can’t appreciate it. He can’t think of anything but Lyra. His fury has settled into a steady throb; he pushes into each footstep closer, into promises he repeats in his head like a mantra. _Lyra, we’re coming to get you. Lyra, I’ll make sure no-one ever hurts you again._

As he walks back to the bank they’ve set up camp on, he pulls at the thread of his thoughts, worrying it over and over - what’s Coulter doing to her? Where is she? Is she safe? Is she _alive_? – watched by a part of his brain that simply asks _why?_

The answer is scarily simple, takes all the air from his lungs. He turns it over as he helps Dad build the fire and get on with dinner so Lee has something warm to come back to. He worries at it whilst he and Dad eat, and eventually, when they’re done, he puts down his tin plate, rests his chin on his hands for a second, and says: “Dad, can I ask you something?”

Dad turns to him, profile sharp in the rapidly fading light. A branch catches and sparks flare up. Sayan is fast asleep in a tree above their heads. “Of course.”

“How did you know that Mum was the one?” Will asks, tentative. He doesn’t know what Dad’s reaction is going to be. None of them have ever really talked about relationships before except in a general, safety-and-consent sense. His parents had been calmly amused and Will had wanted to sink through the floor to Australia and never return.

“I…” Dad pauses. “That’s a difficult question.”

“Sorry.”

“No, don’t apologise. You know how we met?”

“Yeah. The new year when everyone thought they were going to die. You were in…Venice?”

“Verona. But yes. We were at this party. I was on leave, seeing some friends. I saw her sitting on her own in the windowsill. She had a velvet dress on, and I thought she looked so beautiful.” Dad smiles, just faintly. “Took ages to get the courage up to go talk to her, but then we talked all night. Wandered the city. She felt like someone I had known all along, if that makes any sense. Like I was coming home.” He pauses, laughs. “She could probably do a better job of explaining it, Will, she’s the poet. I just knew she was something special.” Another pause. “Is this what I think it’s about?”

“Dad,” Will says and Dad holds his hands up, like _peace._

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No, I…” Will trails off, stares at the fire, at the dancing shapes of the flames, the story of them. “Lyra…she’s special too. And I barely know her but I just…I can’t…”

“Sometimes it goes like that.”

“You’re not going to say I’m too young?”

Dad’s smile is wry. “You know my friend Eamon, from the Marines? Eamon Chu?” When Will nods, Dad continues, “he and his husband got together at your age. It happens. Granted they’d known each other longer than five days and weren’t involved in a war against God, but I do think that sometimes you just know. And that’s ok.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Will says, and Dad’s smile softens, the way it always does.

“Anytime.” He picks up a stick, prods the fire. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I think you and Lyra would be good for each other, if it were to work out. I’ve always thought you’d end up with someone like her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” Dad gives him one last smile and then they lapse into silence. Dad is turning his wedding ring around his finger, staring into the fire. Will knows that Dad is thinking about Mum, about the fact they’ve been gone so much longer than expected; he worries too, but not as much as he should. He doesn’t know whether to feel guilty about that but most of his thoughts are already occupied. At least Mum’s not in danger the way Lyra surely is.

Eventually, they spot the balloon descending between mountains; half an hour later, Lee is trudging into camp and flinging himself down by the fire.

“Howdy,” he says, accepting a plate from Dad, “Iorek went to hunt. He’ll be back at some point when he’s done butchering the local wildlife.”

Despite his bright tone, he’s frowning. Will pulls his knees to his chest, rests his chin on them. “Anything?”

“Airships anchored above Mansera. The maps say it’s Mansera, anyway. Less than seventy miles off. They’re definitely Magisterium – no-one else uses that model.”

“Right,” Dad says heavily. “That’s unfortunate.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Will asks.

“I can call a northerly wind, try and make it harder for them.” Dad shakes his head, “not much else, I’m afraid. We’ve just got to hope we get lucky before they do.”

On that grim note, they bank the fire and try to settle down to sleep. Will spends most of the night watching the night sky rotate through the constellations, breathing as steadily as he can. Airships don’t mean anything. Airships don’t mean the Magisterium are going to find her first. The Magisterium don’t even know what they’re looking for.

In the morning, they clear camp and get moving in silence. Will takes point to get away from any possibility of conversation. He focuses on the compass and the map and the landscape, tracing the spire of Nanga Parbat rearing up ahead of them against the silk-blue sky, its peak wreathed in streaks of white cloud. That afternoon, they reach a meadow with a lake and swelling banks of forest; Dad calls a break to make camp so he can scry. They leave Lee to check the balloon and sort out their packs, head into the forest – Will to find firewood for the night, Dad to find a specific Himalayan plant that induces clear vision. When Will has gathered as much as he can carry, he heads back to the treeline only to be stopped by Dad, who is hovering there and watching something through the trees.

“Wait a second,” he says quietly, and Will steps up beside him. Belatedly, he becomes aware that Lee is talking to someone.

“Iorek, you’re scaring her,” Lee is saying, a little reproving. “Look, I know you’re a savage killing machine but _really,_ she’s only little. You could make a bit of an effort.”

“What’s he on about?” Will whispers, and Dad shifts so Will gets a better view of their camp. Hester is perched on a tree stump, ears flat against her back, and Iorek is hunched down in the grass, head on his paws. Lee is standing near a tiny, brown-skinned girl, her dæmon fluttering bird-formed above her head.

“You can pet him if you like,” Lee is saying encouragingly. “He’s not scary.”

“I am scary,” Iorek growls.

“Not _helping,_ ” Lee hisses. “Do you want her to run screaming before the others get back?”

The girl reaches out tentatively to brush her hand across one of Iorek’s ears and then retracts it quickly and takes a big step backwards, reaching for her dæmon who turns into something small and fluffy and huddling into her chest. When Will looks, Dad is rolling his eyes; Will takes it as a sign that they can interrupt, marches out of the trees.

“Lee?” he calls, crossing the grass to their camp and dumping the wood by the pit they’ve made for the fire.

“Oh, you’re here, good,” Lee spins in a circle. The little girl looks alarmed, but Sayan jumps off Dad’s shoulder and makes an inviting noise in the back of her throat. The girl’s dæmon joins her on the floor, curious, and careful – the girl watches them warily, and then looks back up. “I have good news.”

“Good news?” Dad echoes. “Where did she come from?”

“Hold your horses, Mr Parry,” Lee grins. “Ama here says she knows where Lyra is. She’s seen her.”

Will’s knees nearly give out with the shock of it. Lyra is…this girl knows where she is…she’s _alive…_ he’s imagined a moment like this for so long now it’s here he doesn’t know what to think. Dad grabs his arm, steadies him, and then kneels down so he’s more on a level with Ama whilst their dæmons talk. Will sinks onto a log and buries his face in his hands, pressing his fingers hard into the sides of his skull.

“She’s half a day’s walk from here, round the side of the mountain,” he hears Dad translate, “Ama and Kulang have been bringing supplies from their village. Coulter’s keeping Lyra asleep. She told them that she was a wise woman, and her daughter was under a spell, but they saw Coulter drug her. They snuck away to their holy people and retrieved a herb that will wake Lyra, but they haven’t found a way to get to her yet.” Then, “apparently the golden monkey pulls wings off bats.”

“I wouldn’t be fucking surprised,” Lee says.

“Language,” Hester says.

“What? The kid doesn’t understand English, it’s fine.”

There is a moment of very judgemental silence, and then the rustling of feathers, of a pack, of water being poured. Eventually Will looks up. The girl, Ama, is crossed legged in the grass, and Lee has settled against Iorek’s side. Dad meets Will’s eyes and smiles – tired, and not a little savage.

“Well,” he says. “Let’s finish making camp and figure out our plan of attack.”

*

The undergrowth is itchy. John had forgotten this, along with many of the other uncomfortable aspects of being on active deployment. He tries to get comfortable, but he and Lee have been in this spot for several hours now, knows it’s a lost cause. Iorek is hidden on the other side of the valley somewhere, and rainbows dance across the floor, light reflected from the tumbling, crystalline waterfall at the valley’s head. John can see the cave entrance, has watched Coulter and the golden monkey dip in and out of it a few times, absolutely unaware that anything is wrong. He’s glad they’ve caught her off-guard, glad she obviously thinks being somewhere this remote is a guarantee of safety. If she’s not expecting things to go wrong, Will and Ama have a better chance of success.

The pair of them had disappeared into another world Will had scouted this morning, Ama clutching a sachet of powder and a paintbrush that she’d refused to relinquish. She really is a tiny thing – no more than nine – but she insisted on seeing the job done. John hadn’t wasted breath arguing with her. He’s not happy about sending another child into danger, but Ama knows the cave, knows Coulter’s routine, is more knowledgeable of the terrain than any of them. In any case, they’ve got the easier job – cut in, cut out. The rest of them have to provide a distraction and fend off the inevitable arrival of enemy troops.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Lee hisses, and John follows his gaze to the other end of the valley, the glint of sunlight off bright metal. An airship. Two airships, landing. Coulter has appeared again, watches them with an expression John cannot read from this distance. The airships spill soldiers with dog dæmons, all silent, and he watches as they begin a controlled bounding exercise up the valley and towards the cave.

“At least we planned for this,” John replies. “Sayan, watch our six.”

“On it,” she responds, flapping up to a tree.

As expected, after five minutes, they hear footsteps. Smart commander. They’re not expecting resistance but patrolling anyway – it’s what he would have done, in their place. He unsheathes his knife, meets Lee’s eyes, and the pair of them rise silently out of the underbrush just before the soldiers spot them, stick them as quietly as they can before anyone can sound the alarm. They’re about to resume their watch when they hear a blood-curdling scream from the other side of the valley.

“Well,” Hester says, long-suffering, “looks like they found Iorek.”

“I’m amazed he stayed hidden this long,” Lee replies, and Sayan quietly swoops into the air to go look.

A second of silence passes, and then Iorek boulders down the valley like a deadly, furry avalanche into the soldiers unfortunate enough to be in his path. They hear a whine of mechanical engines, and suddenly small helicopter-like craft are whizzing overhead, twisting midair and strafing the valley floor too, bullets pinging off Iorek’s armour. The Magisterium airships respond with a full volley. John is up on his knees now, taking aim at the squad pulling a throwing net from the hold of the first airship, their intent clear. A bullet whizzes over his head. His heart is pounding. He hears Coulter scream once, sharp, high-pitched, agonised. Without warning, one of the airships explodes.

“Let’s go,” he snaps, and he and Lee are abandoning position to go and join the fight.

*

Waking is slow and sticky and difficult. Lyra is aware of voices – real voices, not dream ones – first. It’s Mrs Coulter, a girl she doesn’t recognise, high and piping, and…Will. It’s Will. He’s here. She struggles against the gluey feeling holding her eyes shut, curses under her breath. What’s happening? Where is she? She feels hard, cold stone under her body.

“I said, stay back,” Will is saying. “Don’t come any closer.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mrs Coulter. “It’s all just been a misunderstanding…”

“A misunderstanding my _arse_ …don’t come any closer, I’m _warning_ you…”

There is a deafening explosion and shockwave rattles against the cave, sending pebbles clattering onto her. She hears Mrs Coulter screaming. There are hands lifting her, dragging her out of the cold, stony place and into somewhere warm and pine-smelling. There is grass beneath her hands. The battle noises abruptly die away. Lyra struggles to her hands and knees, and then flops over onto her side.

“Thank you, Ama,” she hears Will saying. “Thank you. You know the way back to your window?”

The little girl’s voice again, once, and then soft footsteps receding. Lyra wants to throw up. The inside of her mouth tastes revolting. She puts her hands up blindly, looking for Pan, who is just coming awake around her neck. She rolls into an upright position, forces her eyes open and blinks against the dazzle of soft orange sunlight. A blurry figure resolves itself into Will, watching a little person disappear into the distance. After a second, he turns to her. She blinks, swallows. They are a silent clearing, bathed in birdsong and dappled shadows, and Will is _here._

“Hi,” Will says, his ears dark red, then, “you ok?”

“ _Will,_ ” she says, breathless, and then flings herself into his arms. He nearly falls over but finds balance at the last moment and then he’s hugging her back, too tight to be comfortable, but she doesn’t care. What a thing. What a sight to wake up to after all this time. He smells something awful but his solidity right here after an age of shadows and vapours and dreams is more than Lyra can cope with. She chokes back tears. Pan has wriggled in-between them – his fur brushes Will’s arm, but Lyra doesn’t care. Not now. Not after this.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Will is saying with what sounds like a mouthful of her hair. “I can’t believe it.”

“Me neither. How long was I…”

“We’ve been searching for nearly three months.”

“Three _months_?”

“She was hiding with you in the Himalayas, you know. We travelled all the way from Svalbard.”

“You…” Lyra pulls back, touches her fingers to his cheek. She can’t believe she once thought he was blank and boring; his expressions might be small, but they’re there, dancing one after the other across his face – relief, hope, worry, and something she can’t name but _feels,_ deep in her bones. “Thank you, Will. _Thank you_.”

“You’re welcome.” Will gets to his feet, offers her a hand up. His hand is no longer bandaged, his fingers fully healed. “We should probably get to the rendezvous before Dad and Lee get worried.”

“Lee’s here?”

“And Iorek. We’re a pretty good team,” he says. As they walk, he tells her the story, beat by beat, of how they crossed worlds looking for her. Of everything they’ve done, of everyone that’s mustering for war. Lyra listens in silence, doesn’t let go of his hand – Pan is flying ahead of them, changing shape over and over and over in joy at being free. They pause to close a window, and then keep walking through the forest.

Eventually, Will pulls her to a halt, fumbles one handed for the knife and closes his eyes, draws a window into the air just to the left of a pretty bush covered in yellow flowers. She steps through after him, back into her world. It’s quiet here too now, but she can smell smoke.

“Lyra!” she hears and she twists to see Lee and Dr Parry appearing out of the trees. She lets go of Will’s hand to sprint towards them, flinging herself at Lee who catches her and lifts her up into an embrace. He’s laughing and hugging her tightly, all leather and gunpowder. Hester is nuzzling Pan and over his shoulder she can see Iorek watching them all. When Lee finally puts her down, Dr Parry gives her a hug too.

“Elaine and Mary send their love,” he tells her, and then gently pushes her towards Iorek, who nudges his head against hers like she’s a bear cub, making a rumbling noise deep in his chest that communicates more than any words could.

After a second, Will is at her shoulder again, and she turns from Iorek to look at him again, backlit by the sun. Something in his hands is glinting gold.

“You…” she says.

“I kept it safe for you,” he says, and she hugs him again for good measure, feeling like her heart is going to _burst._ She’s loathe to let go of him but she does, holding her beloved alethiometer between them, opening the lid and settling her fingers on the dials. Will is watching her, steady and sure, and she meets his eyes for a second before looking back down, heat flooding to her cheeks.

“What now?” Lee is asking.

“I promised we’d go home to collect Elaine and Mary before we went looking for Asriel,” Dr Parry replies, “but we’re going to have to work out the best way to…”

“They’re in another world,” Lyra interrupts. The alethiometer needle had moved almost before she’d framed the question, as though it’s as glad to have her back as she is to have it.

Dr Parry blinks. “Excuse me?”

“They’re in another world,” Lyra repeats. “They have a job to do. But we should go and find them.” She squints at the needle. “We have to go the flat plain of Tibet and then cut through to the sixth world and we’ll find them.”

“Well that solves a lot,” he says, “we’d better go and see what they’ve been up to.”

“We’ve got a bit of trek back to the balloon,” Lee adds. “But we should make it by nightfall if we get going.”

After some faff, and finding some food for Lyra, they begin to walk. Well, the others walk. Lyra spends most of the afternoon on Iorek’s back, on account of the fact her legs don’t seem to want to work after three months in a drugged sleep. Will walks next to them, and the adults take the lead, heads bent together and talking about something that makes them both laugh. They make it back to the balloon after an entirely uneventful journey, and Lyra slides off Iorek’s back.

After a few minutes watching them hitch the balloon and get it filling, Iorek says: “I must go and gather my bears for war.”

“You’re _going_?” Lyra says, dismayed.

“I must, child. You are safe. Battle calls.”

“I’m sure we’ll see you soon,” Dr Parry says, probably in an attempt to be comforting. “We’ll be at the fortress as well within the month.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Lee calls from the inside of the balloon, which gets a sharp snort from Iorek.

Lyra flings her arms as far around his neck as they’ll go, presses her face into his neck fur. “Be safe,” she says. “Be careful, Iorek.”

“I will,” he says, and then turns and lopes off into the gathering, dusty dark.

By the time the balloon is in the air, it really is dark and getting colder as they gain altitude. Lee and Dr Parry are chatting on the other side of the balloon; neither of them blinked an eyelid at Lyra and Will climbing under the same fleece together and huddling for warmth. She tips her head back against the basket, looks through the struts at the stars seeded across the night, turning her thoughts over. Pan, a fluffy wildcat, is curled up dozing at her side, and Will’s arm is pressed against hers, their knees touching. He travelled thousands of miles just for her, she thinks. He did what she did for Roger, without a second thought or a glance back. Then, unbidden, her dreams begin to come back to her. Roger begins to come back to her.

“Will can I tell you something?”

“Yeah.”

“When I was asleep, I dreamed of the land of the dead,” she pauses, briefly uncertain, then plunges forward. “Roger was there. He was calling me but I couldn’t hear what he said.”

Will cottons on immediately. “Do you think it’s actually a world?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. They never talked about it at Jordan.”

“If it’s a world like any other I could cut through to it,” Will says quietly, and Lyra nods. “Don’t think my parents would be very pleased, though. Dad wants to take the knife to Asriel.”

“We ran away before,” Lyra says, turning her face to him.

Will’s eyes are steady in the dark, inches away. “We did.”

“And we can go to Asriel after. If we went.”

“We might not come back, if we go to the world of the dead.”

“You’d come with me?”

Will gives her a look like _do you think I’m really going to leave you again._ It makes Lyra feel all strange and fizzy. She ducks her head into her furs, unsure of what her face is doing right now.

“Have you asked the alethiometer?” he asks after a second.

“It keeps getting stuck on listening and won’t say anything else,” she says. “I think it means trust my instincts. I always have. It feels right, Will. Roger has to tell me something and I have to say I’m sorry for betraying him. I have to.”

Snuggles closer. “We’ll find a way,” Will says eventually, as calmly as if she’s proposing a trip to buy chocolatl. “I trust you.”

She leans her head against his shoulder and presently they both fall asleep.

*

The sixth world from the Tibetan plateau is a grassy plain criss-crossed by wide braids of dried-out lava. The sun is hazy and slightly green, and if John narrows his eyes he can see clumps of enormous trees on the horizon, potentially a silver-blue line of water. Closer-by are herds of odd diamond-shaped creatures that graze peacefully and pay absolutely no attention to the group of humans that have suddenly appeared in their midst.

“This path,” Lyra says decisively, pocketing her alethiometer and striding out, looping her arm through Will’s and tugging him along too. Pan turns into something that looks like one of the grazing creatures, and then, with an unhappy snort, back into a panda. John briefly catches Lee’s eye. Lee pulls a face back and begins to walk too.

 _I’ll fly ahead,_ Sayan says and does just that, circling up and up on the wing. John watches her for a second and then jogs to catch up with the others. Why did Mary and Elaine end up _here?_ They didn’t have the knife, they didn’t have any protection from the Spectres through Cittagazze but somehow they’re here, safe and sound. John has no idea what’s going on, is only more determined to find them. He’s been away too long.

They walk along the lava for several hours in the sunshine before they begin to hear the thundering noise, faint at first but getting exponentially louder with each passing second.

“Off the path,” John orders, but before they can get much further, they are surrounded by more diamond shaped creatures – grey ones with short trunks and bright, intelligent eyes. They have four legs, the front and back ones hooked into polished wooden-looking wheels, and they’re all making hooting noises. John and Lee get in front of the kids, hands on weapons, but abruptly John realises that this isn’t threatening behaviour, it’s _excitement._

“Mary! Elaine!” the lead creature says, and the rest of its gang take up the chant. John feels his knees wobble, takes a steadying breath. Of _course_ Mary and Elaine have found a whole new people to be adopted by. Why does he even bother with surprise?

“Mary, Elaine,” he repeats. “Do you know where they are?”

“Mary, Elaine,” the lead creature – _person_ – nods, gesturing with its trunk. Several of the others have knelt, carefully, and after some confusion, Lyra says,

“I think they want us to ride them.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Lee replies, eyeing them with no small wariness. “I picked ballooning to get away from horses.”

“Well, I want to find Mum,” Will says, firm. He and Lyra push past John and approach the two closest kneeling creatures. Pan scrambles up Lyra’s arm and onto her shoulders. Lyra holds out her hand to her creature, who taps it with its trunk; after a second, Lyra settles herself onto the creature’s back and it rises to a standing position.

“Come on!” she calls. “It’s really weird, you’ve got to try it!”

She’s right. It is really weird. There is no other way to describe it. He holds onto the creature’s mane to keep his balance as it begins to skate down the path on its wheels, the side legs pushing it forward. He also finds it odd that he’s sitting on top of a sentient being, a person, who is making a noise much like laughter at Lyra’s delighted shrieking. The ridiculous girl has let go of its mane and thrust her hands into the air, laughing her head off as her creature glides down an incline towards what is indeed a stony lakeshore.

Relatively quickly, a clump of small huts on the lake comes into view, and the creatures are rolling to a stop, lowering themselves for their riders to get off.

“Mary, Elaine!” his creature says, gesturing, and he follows the motion of its trunk to see a pair of beloved figures rounding one of the huts, arms full of nets. Elaine shrieks and drops hers, jumping over it and dashing towards him – he meets her halfway and spins her around, holding her close.

“What are you _doing_ here?” she asks, then Will is joining the hug too. “Oh my baby, my love. Hi.”

“Hi Mum,” Will says. “Missed you.”

“Missed you too. Where’s Lyra?” Elaine breaks the hug, briefly presses a kiss to John’s mouth, and then spins around. Lyra is hugging Mary, and then after a second they all swap around, embracing and laughing, watched with bright curiosity by a ring of the creatures. Lee and Hester hover at the edge of the circle, watching too; Lee has a small smile on his face, obviously not wanting to intrude.

“This is Lee Scoresby,” John says, when everyone has settled down a little, “Lyra’s old friend, the aeronaut. Lee, my wife Elaine and our best friend, Mary.”

“A pleasure to meet you both,” Lee drawls, accepting handshakes and cheek kisses. “I’ve heard a lot.”

“Only good things, I hope,” Elaine says, pointed.

“Only ever good things, darling,” John replies.

“He was the perfect gentleman,” Lee adds. “No complaints. You’ve trained him well.”

Mary facepalms, groans, “oh my god, there are two of them now,” and everyone bursts out into laughter again.

One of the creatures they haven’t met – its grey fur streaked through with white, and a necklace of shells draped around its neck – steps forward and says something to Mary, who responds, bringing her arm up to her mouth in the approximation of a trunk. Elaine slips her arms around both John and Will.

“The mulefa are going to throw a feast when you lot have rested,” Mary translates after a second.

“They really don’t-” John starts.

“Don’t try and stop them,” Elaine interjects gently. “They _love_ feasts.”

“Feasts?” Lyra says, perking up. “Food?”

“Glad to see nothing’s changed,” Mary laughs. “Come on. Bath first, food later. I love you and am glad to see you but boy do you stink.”

“Nooo,” Lyra whines, predictable as clockwork. “Do I _have_ to?”

“Yes,” every adult says in perfect unison, catching each other’s eyes and bursting into laughter again.

*

After the feast, everyone settles into little knots of conversation. One of the mulefa spends a while combing Will’s hair for him, apparently fascinated by how little of it he has; when she’s done and begins a conversation with Mum, he wanders off. Lyra is sandwiched between Mary and Lee with a few of the mulefa, looking like they’re having a great time. Dad is sitting by one of the fires, staring into the flames. Will sits down next to him.

“Hi,” Dad says.

“Hi,” Will replies, shuffling over and resting his head on Dad’s shoulder. If this is it, he wants to memorise every last thing about his parents, about Mary, even about Lee. He wants to carry them with him when he goes, chokes back the fear that this might be the last time he’ll see them. He can’t think like that. He can’t.

“You ok?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Hmm,” Will says. Then, carefully, trying not to give anything away, “if you had to do something really important that might end really badly, would you do it?”

“What’s brought this on?” Dad asks, concerned.

“I’m just thinking about Asriel,” Will lies. “What happens when we get there. I know it’s important, I just…”

“Ah. I know.” Dad sighs. “I mean, if you were convinced it was the right thing then yes, I would. But you won’t be alone, Will. We’ll all be with you.”

 _You won’t,_ Will thinks quietly, but doesn’t say anything. In any case, Dad isn’t done.

“I’m so proud of you, you know that?” he says. “I hope you do. You’ve done such a good job these last few months. I know they haven’t been easy, but you’ve handled it remarkably.”

There’s a lump in Will’s throat; his eyes burn. He turns his face into Dad’s shoulder, moves closer. Dad puts an arm around him. “Thanks, Dad,” he says, slightly muffled but knowing Dad can hear. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Dad replies. “I love you too.”

*

In centuries to come the ghosts and angels will retell the story of the girl and boy who walked into the land of dead and cut their way out. They will sing of the deal struck with No-Name the harpy – a life story, a life well lived, for freedom. They will speak of the Authority sliced from his cage, of what it took to stop the Flood, of sacrifices too keen to bear.

All of this is to happen, brought into being by children who do not yet know what they must do.

For now, it lurks on the horizon.

For now, all Mary, Elaine, John, and Lee know is that they wake up the morning after the feast to find that Will and Lyra have vanished.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's the end! Thank you so much for all the support, here and on Tumblr - it means the absolute world :D <3 I am pleased to announce there will be a one-shot sequel written soon and also a tiny little prequel in this series as well, hopefully both up soon.
> 
> Please come and scream with me on Tumblr: @if-fortunate. I will also be posting some worldbuilding notes on there because Phillip Pullman is handwave-y in extreme about geography and this bugs me.


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